Fair Elections Act is actually unfair
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/03/2015 (3285 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
According to the Council of Canadians, there were 100,000 Canadians who got the chance to vote in 2011 because someone vouched for them. And there were 400,000 Canadians who used voter-information cards to gain access to the ballot box. The council claims that with amendments put in place by Stephen Harper’s government through the Fair Elections Act, those votes could be in jeopardy.
The new act does not allow for individuals to vouch for more than one person and it also prohibits the use of voter-information cards.
The council goes further and claims this is deliberate — that the people who relied on these forms of identification are less likely to vote Conservative and thus, suppressing their votes works in the government’s favour.
If that’s an unfair characterization, you would think the Harper government would use its sizeable clout and embark on an information campaign proving the council’s allegation to be false.
But so far it hasn’t. And it needs to.
For many, it seems the Harper government talks a good game on the issue of democracy. But it needs to do more to convince Canadians it really values these fundamental standards of democracy, including the right to vote.
The impetus behind the push for changing Canada’s election laws was never about marauding gangs of voters attempting to vote illegally.
It was about the use of robocalls in the 2011 federal election, in which people were deliberately given incorrect information about the location of their polling stations. Nearly 800 people complained about the misleading calls. Former Conservative staffer Michael Sona was convicted last August of having wilfully prevented or endeavoured to prevent an elector from voting for some of those calls. Mr. Sona is out on bail pending an appeal of his conviction.
Many Canadians were outraged by these actions, seeing it as an attack on basic democracy. The Fair Elections Act was supposed to be in response to that outrage.
It’s missed its mark.
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand has expressed concerns the act does not give the commissioner for Elections Canada the power to compel witnesses to speak to him during investigations, which was the problem in the agency’s 2011 investigation of robocalls. In other words, the same thing could happen again, and Elections Canada would have a difficult time investigating it.
The Fair Elections Act doesn’t actually work at ensuring a fair election. Instead, the government remains resolute in closing the door on election fraud, another one of its perceived boogeymen to keep our eyes off the real issue.
In March, the Ontario Superior Court agreed to hear arguments of lobbyists seeking an injunction against the implementation of the bill. The Council of Canadians, the Canadian Federation of Students and three private citizens are arguing the act is a violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It violates the right to vote and the right to equality.
In the meantime, little has been done by Elections Canada to inform the public about the new requirements, or to work with marginalized groups that may have difficulty obtaining the necessary documentation in order to vote. Perhaps it’s waiting for the outcome of the court case before launching a public relations campaign. Or perhaps Elections Canada is aware the Fair Elections Act prohibits Elections Canada from actually encouraging people to vote.
Canadians are expected to go to the polls in October.
If the government wants to turn the tide on falling voter turnout, it should actively work on getting the word out about how the new identification requirements work — the key word being if.