Is there a minimum number or percentage of voters required to make an election valid?
No, says the legal department at Elections Canada. There is no provision in the Canada Elections Act requiring a minimum number or percentage of votes in order for the election results to be valid. Parliamentarians and Elections Canada have been growing more worried about Canada’s continuing decline in voter turnout in recent years, however, even though elections will continue to be valid as numbers drop. Apart from a few blips caused by the timing of elections at the height of either winter or summer, or a few other political factors, about 75 per cent of eligible Canadians have traditionally tended to vote since the end of the Second World War. That number started to drop with the 1993 general election, to 70 per cent that year, 67 per cent in 1997, 64 per cent in 2000 and 60.9 per cent in 2004. (In 2004, less than a quarter of the young people who were eligible to vote, for example, actually cast ballots.) The 2006 election saw a slight improvement, however. Turnout climbed for the
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