The Franchise, Personators, and Dead Men: An Inquiry into the Voters’ Lists and the Election of 1891

BEN FORSTER, MALCOLM DAVIDSON, and R. CRAIG BROWN TheFranchise,Personators, and DeadMen: An Inquiryintothe Voters' Lists and the Election of Ti-iw scI-IOl•^Rl•¾ voct•son the Canadian federal electionof •89• has beenonissues andpersonalities, • aperspective whichfollows naturally fromthevigourof thecampaign. SirJohnA. Macdonald's Conservativesmademuchof the Britishconnection, the perceivedthreat of continentalism, andtheNationalPolicy; theircampaign wascharacterizedasone 'ofshrieking, of denunciation, andof violence '2byLiberal newspaperman JohnWillison,nomeanhandatdenunciation himself. Thedin,clangour, andloudhuzzahs ofthatelection campaign arerich with meaning,but they obscure more essential aspects of Victorian Canada's politics. Consequently, thestandard treatments oftheMarch election ignoretheodditieswhichLiberal•avJohnCharltonnotednot longafter:that'therewerefifty thousand youngmendebarredfrom voting whohadarighttovote,thirtyor fortythousand deadmenon the list, many of whom were voted for by personators, and tensof thousands of voterswhowereoutof thecountry,and[that]therewasa disposition insomequarters touseimpropermeans tobringthesemen back.'"WhetherCharlton'sparticularnumberswereaccurate or not, SeeD. Creighton, John A.Macdonald: TheOldChieftain (Toronto•965),553-6o; P.B.Waite,Canada •874-•896: Arduous Destiny (Toronto•97•), 22•-27; R.C. Brown,Canada's National Policy •883-•9oo (Princeton •964), 26•-8o; P. Crunican,Priests andPoliticians: Manitoba Schools andthe Election of• 896(Toronto •974),•5-3ø; J.R.Miller,Equal Rights: The Jesuits' Estates ActControversy (Montreal•979),•6•-7 •; BruceFergusson, W.S. Fielding, •: The Mantle ofHowe (Windsor,•4s•97o), •34-5•; K.A. McKirdy,'The LoyaltyIssuein the •89• Federal Election Campaign, andanIronicFootnote,' Ontario History, Lv,•963, x43-54. J.S.Willison,SirWilfridLaurier andtheLiberal Party,vol.• (Torontox9o3),•6o Canada, Houseof Commons, Debates, •7June, •89•, •ooo Canadian Historical Review, I•XVn,•, •986 øøø8'3755/86/ø3øø'øø •7 $o•.• 5/o¸ University ofTorontoPress 18 THE CANADIAN HISTORICAL REVIEW hisdiscussion of themreflecteda powerfuland validconcernheand hiscontemporaries hadwiththeinstitutional structure ofpolitical life.4 The numbers werenotemptyinvention.The Franchise Actof •885, thoughit did not giveuniversalmanhoodsuffrage,gavea larger percentage ofBritishmales agedtwenty-one andovertherighttovote thanearlier.• Yet in Ontario in the March •89• federal electionthere wereover34ooomore nameson thevoters'liststhan the •89• census listed males age2• or more. 6 In forty-nine of ninety-two Ontario constituencies thenumberof electors exceeded thecensus population of maleadults,the excess rangingfrom a dozenor soto morethan 25oo (see Appendix, Table •). While the Ontario situationwas extravagant, it wasnotunique.In Quebec, tenof sixty-five constituencies hadvoteroverruns, theexcess ranging fromafewdozento545-In fouroffifteenNewBrunswick constituencies thebulgethickened from a mere handful in Queensto almostxooo in SaintJohn City (see Appendix,Tables2 and 3).7 The extravoters weresymptomatic of problems whichexisted in all Ontario,indeedin all Canadian,constituencies. They werebornof a partisan effortbySirJohnA.Macdonald's Conservatives toconsolidate thestructure of the nationalpolity.The flawedand partialnatureof the effort reflectednot only the institutional inefficiencies and fumblingsof governmentand partieswhen facedwith transforminga hardylocalistic politicalcultureintoa regionalandevennationalone. It alsorevealed the conscious effort by theTory government andby bothparties attheconstituency leveltoskew thepolitical system intheir favour.Moreover,thedifficulties of theelectoral system of whichthe 4 Theonlyprevious articledealingspecifically withtheoperation of theFranchise Act isMalcolm Montgomery, 'The SixNationsIndiansandtheMacdonald Franchise,' Ontario History, •.v•, 1965, 13-25. 5 NormanWard, TheCanadian House ofCommons: Representation (2nded.,Toronto 1963),222 6 Canada,Census t89o-9 t, •, xi. The census wastakenbeginning inJuneof theyear. The34oooarethetotalofoverruns ofallOntario constituencies blessed byoverruns. WewouldliketothanktheHistorical Atlas ofCanada, vol.2 (forthcoming), and throughit theSocial Sciences andHumanities Research Council,for providing thesupportwhich,amongother matters,turnedup thesenoteworthynumbers. 7 In noconstituency did theactualnumberof individuals whovotedexceed the census population of malesovertheageof twenty-one in the 1891election. The census of 1891wasseverely criticized for overenumeration. Yetthevoteroverruns wouldbeminimized,notexaggerated, byoverenumeration in thecensus. For some criticisms ofthecensus see R.Cartwright, Reminiscences (Toronto1912),325-9. AlsoFrederickBorden,citedin A.A. Brookes, 'Family,Youth,andLeavingHome in Late-Nineteenth CenturyRuralNovaScotia: CanningandtheExodus, 1868-1893,'inJ. Parr,ed.,Childhood andFamily inCanadian History (Toronto1982), 94. VOTERS' LISTS AND THE ELECTION OF 1891 19 overrunswere a by-productwere compoundedby the large-scale populationmovementsof the 188os,which increasedthe task of institutionalconsolidation, and indeed enhancedthe potentialfor partisan manipulation of the electoralprocess. The interplayamong theprocesses of nationalconsolidation, localist resistance, manipulationofthepolitical system bythecontending parties,andtheimpactof demographic changeisthesubject of thisinquiry. Whywerethere somanyextra voters? Much of the answerliesin the federal Franchise Act of 1885. Both Conservativesand Liberals contributed to the process of creatinga moreemphatically national political culture,of whichtheFranchise Actwasa part- andassuchit wasonefurther manifestation of thestrongimpulsetorationalize and organize whichcaptivated the imagination of somanylateVictorian Canadians? Theactreplaced thevarious provincial acts which defined whocouldvotein federalelections before1885andplacedthepower of namingwhocouldvotefirmly in the handsof the centralpolitical power.Conservative M•'s asserted, in 1885andlater,thattheactwasa rejection ofparochial politics: itwouldbringordertonationalelectoral life,andthusencourage nationalfeeling? AgainstthisinitiativetheLiberalsdefendedtheimportance of the localcommunity, theusefulness of political diversity, andtheneedfor...