Last year’s seemingly-unending American presidential election is in the rear-view mirror. After months of baseless claims by the Trump campaign with respect to voting irregularities, President Joe Biden’s inauguration took place in January—in a ceremony marked by masked faces and viral mittens.
There is plenty to dissect in the aftermath of the November 3 election: the relative successes of the Biden and Trump campaigns, the inaccurate predictions of American pollsters, the Trump campaign’s collection of failed court challenges of state voting results, and the causes and scope of the shocking Capitol riots in early January, in which white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and others stormed the U.S. Capitol.
One institutional aspect that also deserves reflection is the structure of the American presidential electoral system itself, which consists of a widely-varying patchwork of largely state-made laws. It would be particularly troubling to consider whether the lack of uniformity (and confusion) surrounding election laws materially contributed to groups’ abilities to inflame passions and provoke violence via claims of voter fraud.
Just what are these widely-varying electoral laws? Although there are unified federal election laws related to, say, the prohibition of discrimination in voting or access to voting of overseas military personnel, much of what animates the actual process of voting is determined more locally.
In the 2020 election, for example, New York and other states did not require identification from a voter in order to cast a ballot. Delaware requests identification, though photographic identification is not required. Ohio has stricter rules, though a photo ID is still not required. Six states have strict photo ID rules in place, though there is variation within them as well: Georgia allows voting on a provisional ballot, provided that the voter returns within three days to show ID; Kansas allows voting by provisional ballot, provided that the voter submits photo ID before the canvass board meets; Wisconsin simply has a strict photo ID requirement. Even so, there are some exceptions to voter identification requirements, including those who do not have ID resulting from “recent natural disaster” (Texas), and those who have religious objections to the taking of photographs (eight states, most of which are Southern).
There is also variation in rules for when automatic recounts are triggered within a state; how election results can be contested; and what the deadline is for counting a mail-in ballot as valid.
Furthermore, there is variation in both the methods for marking ballots (e.g. paper ballots marked by hand or computerized voting systems) and the methods for tabulation (e.g. hand-count or optical scan).
This is to say nothing of the way that the votes are then translated into Electoral College votes. The vast majority of American states have a winner-take-all approach to the Electoral College votes in a state. Thus, since Donald Trump won the popular vote in Florida, he won that state’s 29 Electoral College votes. In Maine and Nebraska, by contrast, Electoral College votes are allocated in each of their congressional districts, not on a statewide basis.
Canada’s electoral experience stands in stark contrast. Most importantly, Canada’s federal elections are governed by the Canada Elections Act and are administered by a central, non-partisan entity: Elections Canada.
The identification required to vote in a federal election is the same whether you’re in Kitimat, BC or Dildo, NL. Canadian voter registration is similarly uniform.
It may seem unusual—from the Canadian vantage point—that American presidential elections operate under such a large set of laws. At best, the American electoral process may be an unusual headache. At worst, the lack of national standards may disenfranchise certain voters in certain parts of the country: it makes the ease or likelihood of voting dependent on the jurisdiction in which one intends to vote. It may simply be harder to exercise one’s right to vote in a jurisdiction with more onerous identification rules or less permissive mail-in balloting. Whether voting should be easier or harder, it seems to me that it should at least be uniform across the relevant jurisdiction, in this case the country.
A centralized approach to federal elections, as we see in Canada, might also be supported by democratic theory, at least insofar as the relevant demos in a federal election is the entire country: thus the rules governing a country-wide election are set, indirectly, by electors throughout that country. This is contrasted with provincial or state-level elections, in which a good case can be made for allowing that province or state to make its own rules for how it will elect its representatives within its jurisdiction.
The Canadian electoral approach is also one of heightened fairness: voters are not held to more onerous standards because they live on side or another of a provincial border.
If nothing else, a centralized system is cleaner and simpler than what we have seen south of the border.
That said, a country should never be lulled into complacency with respect to the integrity of its elections: given the vital nature to democracy of electoral transparency and accountability, it would be improper to conclude that Canada would not benefit from further electoral improvements.
For example, we as a society must be mindful of the accessibility of polling stations, not only in terms of accessibility for electors with disabilities, but also in terms of geographic accessibility throughout the country. We must ensure that elections are conducted in a manner that is widely held to be fair and open. Troublingingly, research conducted by Elections Canada in the aftermath of the 2015 federal election indicates that people from lower-income households have lower levels of confidence in the Canadian electoral system.
While there are areas for continued engagement and improvement within the structure of the Canadian electoral system, we can note the relative success associated with an independent and non-partisan body administering a uniform set of rules across the country.