What is the law for bloggers that are putting up political posts?

Campaigning ends midnight Sunday, January 22nd.
Media and candidates cannot show up at polling stations on voting day with electronics to film or broadcast. Media cannot broadcast results prior to the time set by Elections Canada and any public post is currently considered media.  Basic Elections Canada information is here. Under Canadian law, no licenced media outlet is permitted to publicly disseminate results before 10 pm EST Monday night.

What about blogs?

In 2000 a man named Paul Bryan in BC started posting  Atlantic voter results on a webpage prior to the time Elections Canada holds media too.  To make a long story short, here is the time line. The case is now before the Supreme Court.

As it stands, if you post results before 10 pm EST online where others can see it, you are broadcasting to the public. The Canadian Elections Act does not apply outside the country. So none Canadian blogs can post results whenever they want to. The Toronto Star blog:

Hmmm. According to Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act:

No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.

So let’s say that, on Monday night, the Conservatives start sweeping through the Maritime provinces or Newfoundland. Will the Blogging Tories be able to contain their glee and stick to the law before the polls close in B.C.? Will bigfoot bloggers such Andrew Coyne or web fora such as Free Dominion stifle the commentariat who might be posting results with no regard for the rules?

The CBC blog

Blogging on election day is going to be a tricky thing. In this election, unlike the last one, Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act will be in effect, meaning it will be effectively against the law to blog about election results until 10:00 ET, since blogging is considered transmitting “to the public.”

Writing e-mail or instant messaging or for that matter talking on the phone about election results is fine, since those aren’t public transmissions.

But what if you’re blogging election results on your LiveJournal and protecting the posts so that only your LJ friends can read it? How big does your friends list have to be before it’s considered transmitting to the public?

The current law has not caught up to technology, it is under review so don’t post pictures or audio.
If a US or none Canadian blog posts results early you are not off the hook by linking to them. You can chatter about your day, post about what the media is talking about, talk about your own voting experience if you are so inclined. Once the media starts putting up results, you can too at 10:00.01 pm EST.:^)

Update: I bumped this up about six hours (since blogs read top down, I changed the time stamp to move the post closer to the top) so people interested in this information wouldn’t have to go digging for it.