Canadian Federal Election coming on September 20.
- Thread starter Valka D'Ur
- Start date
AmtrakQuebec
King
Canada has both.
Voter Information Cards (VICs) serve a number of purposes:
1. Dates of Election Day and Advance Polls.
2. Location of Advance Polls and regular polling station.
3. Confirmation that the elector is on the voter's list for the polling district stated on the card.
4. Serves as alternate ID for people who lack photo ID and/or other forms of ID.
When I voted by in-home special ballot, the EC workers did look at my VIC and were reassured that my name and address matched the information on it (I was reassured, too).
Sometimes a VIC and a shelter worker or other social worker vouching are all that allow a homeless person to vote (and don't anyone come back with "why would a homeless person want to vote?" - there are lots of working poor who are homeless, and they have as much a legal right to vote as anyone else).
Harper's Holy List of 39 Acceptable Forms of ID (this is my own very sarcastic name for it, but it's apt) was part of the UnFair Elections Act, and for anyone lacking a driver's license or passport, some of these IDs are difficult to impossible to get for people in certain demographics. And there are some odd things on that list, but one voter actually went that route because more standard ways got caught in a bureaucratic catch-22. She ended up buying a fishing license and using that as part of her ID to vote.
There are some forms of ID on that list that should never be used if you have other choices - things like bank statements, credit card statements, income tax assessments, Social Insurance card. All of these are things that should remain confidential between you, your bank, and Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). Especially don't use them for ID if voting by mail-in or special ballot, because you have to provide photocopies or scans of your ID, and I just don't believe that Elections Canada's security is good enough that there's no danger of anyone accessing this information illegally, or literally losing it off the back of a truck and just anyone could find it.
How this list contributes to disenfranchising certain demographics is whether or not people have them in their own name, at their current address. I'm talking about things like utility bills. If you're a college or university student living at home, you'll have your student ID with your name and photo. Okay, that's great. But it doesn't have your address on it. You need something with that. Are any of the utility bills in your own name? No? Well, so much for that. Driver's license? Oh, you take the bus? Okay, so much for that. And on and on until getting to the stuff I mentioned above that it's actually not safe to use for ID. And this is for a student at home, in their own riding. It's much more complicated for a student who is studying away from their home riding, especially in another province. The problem was solved with on-campus polling stations, so students could register and be counted as having voted in their home ridings. But Elections Canada decided not to bother with that this time, and offered a pile of excuses. So there are a lot of students who were shut out this time.
And then there are the seniors who don't live in long-term care (those places get mobile polling stations coming to them). An elderly couple living in their own home? Well, the utility bills are usually in the husband's name. So that means the wife, who may not have ever had a driver's license, her name isn't on the utility bills, doesn't have a passport, doesn't have a plethora of other IDs... is screwed to the point of not being able to vote if she doesn't even have a bank account in her own name.
I've already posted a link to an article that describes some of the headaches experienced by indigenous voters. So what happens when the spelling of their name doesn't match the government's spelling, either due to error or those letters literally not being in either the English or French alphabet? How about encountering a non-indigenous Elections Canada official who hasn't a clue about what other forms of ID are either likely or unlikely to be available? FFS, a bank in British Columbia called the cops on an indigenous man and his granddaughter because they used a status card as ID to open a bank account for the girl.
These are just some of the issues marginalized Canadians have with voting. It honestly does feel like Harper, when he tabled his "Fair Elections Act", deliberately set out to make voting as inconvenient and frustrating for the homeless, students, seniors, disabled, and indigenous voters as he could... because in general, these are not people who tend to vote Conservative.
Uncle Sparky
Pheasant Plucker
In Manitoba where I live, the provincial and federal systems are nearly identical, while the municipal method is very much different, including ballots with multiple 'contests' on a single ballot, and the use of voting machines.
Besides Manitoba, I've also worked on elections in Nova Scotia and Alberta. Each province and often municipalities within provinces have similar, but different rules below the Federal level & each other.
Anyway, I suspect this parliament will last less than two years.
Besides Manitoba, I've also worked on elections in Nova Scotia and Alberta. Each province and often municipalities within provinces have similar, but different rules below the Federal level & each other.
Anyway, I suspect this parliament will last less than two years.
Uncle Sparky
Pheasant Plucker
No computers. Your name, address, and voter number is in one physical poll book at one location. You full out a paper ballot that is hand counted. Hack that, Putin!
Yeah we have physical rolls and ballots too.
On election day you simply front up to any polling place in your electorate (or indeed anywhere outside your electorate via an absent vote). You tell them your name and address, they cross you off from their big book of names, and you vote. I don't get why a card and being constrained to voting at a specific location is needed too. That just seems to be extra steps and an extra obstacle to some people voting.
On election day you simply front up to any polling place in your electorate (or indeed anywhere outside your electorate via an absent vote). You tell them your name and address, they cross you off from their big book of names, and you vote. I don't get why a card and being constrained to voting at a specific location is needed too. That just seems to be extra steps and an extra obstacle to some people voting.
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Zardnaar
Deity
Pretty much how it works here.
That is how it works here. I also do not see the need for adding an ID requirement. Sure, someone could pretend to be me and vote before me, but when I go to vote we find out that it has happened. I do not know what actually happens in such a situation, but I guess that is because it happens rarely enough to not influence anything.
Uncle Sparky
Pheasant Plucker
So what stops a person from voted multiple times in NZ, UK, or OZ? If your name appears in several books, in the same area, what stops you from spending the day going from one polling station to the other voting multiple times?
In the UK, by it being illegal. You would need somewhere to receive mail in each place you want to vote, and if you get caught you are in trouble. There was a fuss about it a few years ago, and they found all of one instance of it happening.
EnglishEdward
Deity
In the UK, one's name is only in the book in one particular polling location.
And if one tries to vote twice, once using the polling card of a neighbour who
has said they will not vote, the staff might recognise that a person is voting twice.
And if one tries to vote twice, once using the polling card of a neighbour who
has said they will not vote, the staff might recognise that a person is voting twice.
If people didn't vote at a specific location, every voting station in the riding would need a copy of the entire voting list. That's insane.
Mind you, they're allowing "vote at any polling station" for the municipal vote next month. I have no idea why, unless they want to avoid a big crush of people in the largest ones.
I'm voting at home for this one, too.
We have mayoral, council, and school board ballots, plus 2 or 3 referendum questions, which I couldn't care less about. I plan to decline those ballots. It's stupid to ask us to vote for a senator, because senators in Canada are not elected. The Prime Minister appoints them, and he can appoint literally anyone who meets the minimum requirements. The only reason he couldn't appoint me is because I don't own $4000 worth of property. I meet all the other requirements. In this vote, the Prime Minister is under no obligation whatsoever to appoint the "winner" - so it's just a pointless waste of paper. At least nobody has to waste time counting this stuff; the municipal ballots went electronic for counting, years ago (though when I worked for the municipal elections as a Deputy Returning Officer, we counted the votes by hand).
Senate appointments tend to be patronage appointments - a "thanks for services rendered" in the case of journalists, for instance. A couple of sleazy Conservative senators were appointed by Harper as a thanks for favorable Conservative coverage back when they were journalists. I guess it really tickled Harper's funnybone when Mike Duffy harassed Margaret Trudeau at Pierre Trudeau's public memorial on Parliament Hill. He couldn't let her grieve in private. He just had to stick his damn microphone in her face and ask for a comment, rubbing her nose in it that it was also the anniversary of the death of her youngest son, Michel, in an avalanche a couple of years before. She ran away in tears, Duffy waddling after her, calling for her to "come back!". For this and other "services" he was rewarded with a Senate appointment.
Anyway, the only ballot I really care about this time is the school board one, although I did notice that an old classmate of mine is running for council. I'll have to check out his platform and see if I want to vote for him. He went into teaching after high school, and eventually worked his way up to superintendent. If he mentions being against the draft curriculum, he's got my vote.
Joij21
🔥Deny, Defend, Depose!🔥
Well I mean the U.S. was part of that empire before it rebelled. You could therefore still call it a former dominion.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
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Now, consider the % of people who do not vote, officially. Then think about what happens if we change "when I go to vote" into "if I don't vote".
Most voting fraud in history hasn't been via machine hacks or big conspiracy schemes across many areas. Instead, it is easier to simply "stuff" ballots with legitimate voters who did not actually vote. If the voting margin is large, skip. If it's within a "margin of fraud", then "find" ballots to swing.
All of this becomes more difficult if votes require a proof of ID, which is not a legitimately difficult thing to manage. Especially in a country with vaccine passports it lied and said it wouldn't use, a stance against voter ID carries 0 credibility.
I get that it is a possibility, but it is not one that happens at an appreciable rate as shown by the study I linked.
TheMeInTeam
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What you've linked does not appear to be anything resembling a procedurally sound audit, though. It wouldn't necessarily be easy to pin down a violator after the fact, and we don't know what "resolved locally" means.
However, if there wasn't material fraud, great. It is still bad process to allow a setup where it is trivial to do it, however.
It depends on the definition of trivial. If the objective is to get as many people to vote as possible, then any slight impediment will harm the rates more than than this one single case of fraud. The simple policy of not requiring voting cards must have been discussed and decided upon at pretty high levels, and they thought that too much of an imposition. How much more would an ID requirement impair turnout? It is probable that there is not good data on this, but as the rates of in person fraud are so vanishingly low it seems quite credible you get the best result with our current system (by some metric such as goodness = valid votes - fraudulent votes). And there are not many systems in the UK I would say that about.
They uh, collate and scan the records afterwards.
Why? That is literally how it works here lol. Except every polling place have a bunch of copies of the electorate's certified list printed up, one for each poll worker table, so multiple people can get their ballots at once.
It's less than 100k names, not super unwieldy. As of 2023 overall about 35000 copies were made for about 7000 polling places across the country, although there has been some move towards putting the lists onto custom electronic devices instead. As best as I recall, last election my name was still crossed out on a paper page in the traditional way.
Personally we go and vote at a smaller school-based polling place out in the suburbs, because the lines are shorter at small places, and schools are where the sausage sizzles and cake stalls are! If we were forced to vote at our closest place, a community centre, then we couldn't get a sausage sandwich or a cupcake while doing our democratic duty and that just wouldn't be right.
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