fixed election dates

Get ready for the Voter Turnout Nerds: you’ll be hearing from them today

Rob Nicholson, Nov. 6, 2006. Yet another reason for adopting fixed date elections is that this measure will likely improve voter turnout because elections will be held in October, except when a government loses the confidence of the House.  The weather is generally favourable in most parts of the country.  Fewer people are transient. So, for example, most students will not be in transition between home and school at that time and will be able to vote.  Moreover, seniors will not be deterred from voting as they might be in colder months … The government’s bill provides that the date for the next general election is Monday, October 19, 2009.

May 26, 2006. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he plans to introduce a bill to set fixed dates for federal elections, as part of a wider movement towards democratic reform. “Fixed election dates stop leaders from trying to manipulate the calendar,” Harper told reporters in Victoria, B.C. on Friday. “They level the playing field for all parties.”

Stephen Harper and Jean Charest have to be glad they got their respective re-elections settled before the worst of the recession kicked in. If recent polls are any indication, both men appear to have dodged a bullet by going into elections late last year instead of waiting for the opposition parties to force them into one.

Elsewhere on this site you will find commentators shrugging indifferently at, if not actually cheering on the Tories for their casual subversion of their own fixed-election-dates law. As usual, I find myself in the minority.