Four months ago a bill was passed in parliament that cut out about a federal million voters. It is a goof that contravenes The Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.
Voters now need a residential address with a street name and number before casting a ballot, because of an amendment to the Canada Elections Act that Parliament enacted four months ago.
But more than one million rural Canadians have no proper residential or civic address. Many of them use post office boxes, and on some native reserves residents only use the name of their community.
So Elections Canada has a problem it needs fixed for 4.4 percent of Canadian voters.
In Nunavut, 80.75 per cent of voters can’t offer a street name and number, while 27.33 per cent of Saskatchewan voters are in the same situation. In Newfoundland and Labrador, it’s 23.21 per cent.
Appears to be an amendment to Bill C-31.
Every politician worth a vote will want this fixed quickly.
- Before voting, electors must prove their identity and residential address by providing one piece of government-issued photo identification showing their name and residential address, or two pieces of identification authorized by the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, each of which establishes their name and at least one of which establishes their residential address. To vote, an elector may instead take an oath and be vouched for by another elector whose name is on the list of electors for the same polling division, and who has the necessary piece(s) of identification to establish his or her identity and residential address.
Voters have needed identification that provides proof of citizenship, age and identify if they have not been previously registered.
Adding an urban-style proof of residence (why isn’t a 911 acceptable?) cuts a lot of people off the list, a million real voters are a lot more than fraud votes.
The last thing poll workers and revision officers need on election day are more stressed, angry, waiting people.
If parliament doesn’t fix this (they can’t if a writ is dropped) the chief electoral officer has over ride power.
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Whooee! You can bet yer best Bible that the Cons’ll get this fixed before the next electionvote. Rural Canajuns is Harper’s biggest cheerleaders. Between this an’ the dumbass niqab issue, I gotta wonder if the MP’s even bother readin’ the laws they pass.
Outta them 4.4% who been disenfranchised, only 2.6% would bother votin’ — maybe less. We only get a ~60% turnout. About 9 times as many Canajuns as were disenfranchised by the stoopid MP’s choose to voluntarily disenfranchise themselves.
About the visual ID thing… what about all the thousands who mail in their votes? Will they hafta show their face to the mailbox?
JB
Guess they’ll have to put one of those web cam thingies on their mailboxes;^)
I had to go and find out what a 911 was in a Canadian context; it’s a ad-hoc “911 civil number” address assigned for helping emergency personnel find a house for 911 emergency calls for out-of-the-way places that may not have a formal address.
That might help some folks, but there seems to be a certain amount of hoops that need to be jumped through to get a 911 civil number (if the web sites I’ve hit doing some quick research on such critters are any indication); expect the NDP to complain about that, if they behave like the Democrats south of the border do about enfranchisement issues.