Would you still vote without party names on the ballot?
Posted October 6, 2015 7:15 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – You’ve heard the saying before, ‘vote for the person, not the party.'”
But now Ontario Conservative candidate Jo-Anne Gignac is making a push to eliminate federal party names from voting ballots. The long-time Windsor city councillor is pushing that same people-before-party message.
But would it work?
Political scientist David Moscrop with UBC says most people would be unprepared for such a change. “People, when they go to vote are thinking about the leader of the federal party and the party itself. A few of them are thinking about the local candidates, but not so many,” says Moscrop.
And if people go to vote without knowing which candidate corresponds to which party, it could lead to confusion. “Removing them is just going to make things more difficult and tricky. And it’s probably going to lead to increasingly inefficient distribution of ballots because people are going to make more mistakes. Is it really worth the trade-off to have people make mistakes and choose the wrong candidate because they think its party A when it’s actually party B.”
Moscrop says it could also lead to more spoiled or throw-away ballots if people are scared of voting for the wrong party. “I’m really not sure what she would achieve by removing it because I think it’s highly-unlikely that voters would then say ‘OK, I better go learn all the names and the party affiliations.’ If they’re just going to do that anyway, then why not just save them the trouble and put it on the ballot.”
Party names have been on ballots since they were recognized as legal entities in 1974.
