The Legitimacy of Numbers

Stories recently published in The Red Deer Advocate and the Alberta CBC web site have placed significant emphasis on the low number of votes in the last Alberta senatorial election. The Advocate, through one of their interviewees, tries to paint a scenario in which Senate reform is primarily a right wing issue:

In terms of the far right in the province, it [senate reform] is pivotal. [...] But the far right make up a very small percentage of the Alberta electorate, of the Alberta population.

In equating the vote with the desire for reform, and then the wishes for reform with a right-wing agenda, they seek to make reform seekers seem extreme. The immediate message is that moderates are pleased with the status quo. And moderates are the majority, as the media often tells us. Moderate is, of course, code for Liberal in some circles –as one reader has pointed out. Those who seek reform can then easily be dismissed as a small gang of right-wing cranks –even though one third of voters is hardly “a very small percentage.”

Similarly, the CBC ushers the end of their piece by focusing on numbers as well. That both the Advocate and the CBC would place such remarks toward or at the end of their reports is significant. There is no room for retort or balance at that point, and what is at the end of a piece is what has the greater staying power in the mind of the reader :

The November senator vote [sic] cost about $3 million, and about one-third of eligible voters cast a ballot, compared to 46 per cent in the general election.

The implication involves some interesting intellectual gymnastics. From both sources, the message is that last Fall’s election of four Alberta senators-in-waiting is illegitimate because the number of votes was small. The purpose is to justify the latest Liberal snub of Albertans when Paul Martin chose three different individuals than those Albertans chose for themselves.

In short, the spin is that Paul Martin has not snubbed Alberta or Albertans in general but the right-wing extremists (a mere third of Albertans). So Martin’s appointments, if we extend the intimations, would appear to be supported by two thirds of Albertans, and therefore his personal choice of three senators seem more legitimate than that of hundreds of thousands of Alberta voters. Martin’s voice is more legitimate than just a third of all of us.

Ideally, we should grant, it would be better if more Albertans had voted then. But some votes are better than just one! And if we are going to call into question the legitimacy of votes on account of voter ratio, what would the effect be elsewhere? Most municipal governments in the country would have to be counted as illegitimate. Calgary’s Mayor Bronconnier would now be in office illegitimately because less that 20% of eligible Calgarians voted, a ratio far smaller than the one third of the senatorial race in question. The same can be said for just about every mayor in Canada. In addition, all student government commanding hundreds of millions of dollars, pretty much across the country’s universities, receive less than 25% (in some cases less than 10%) support from their constituents. They would clearly be illegitimate too.

Let us not forget that the Advocate-CBC spin is designed to elevate a decision by a minority government. In the last federal election, Martin’s Liberals received a little over one third of the aggregated vote (36.7%) of Canadians (but only 22% in Alberta); it was an election with the poorest voter turn out in nearly a century.

Finally, if numbers are the central issue, let us look even closer and compare the two sources of authority for the senate choices: 279, 219 Albertans voted for the Liberals in the last federal election. Individually, on the other hand, senators-in-waiting Betty Unger (308, 014) and Bert Brown (307, 444) each received more votes in the Alberta senate election than did all of Paul Martin’s Liberals in Alberta combined. Neither the Advocate nor the CBC are quick to point that out.

Cross posted from Civitatensis.