September 11, 2007
Veiled Voting Still OK, Which Middle-Aged White Man Are You Voting For?
After weeks of non-campaigning, the provincial election campaign officially opened with a bang yesterday, as Dalton McGuinty warned voters that if they don't vote Liberal, the Tories will form the next government. While true, the comment seems unnecessarily hurtful to poor Howard Hampton.
Muslim groups say they didn't ask for it and don't need it. Parliament says they don't like it and didn't legislate it. Regardless, Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand stands by the controversial Elections Canada decision to allow veiled women to vote. What a peculiar country we live in.
134 Toronto rec centres will be closed to the public every Monday between now and the end of the year, although full-time staff will be going in and hanging out behind locked doors anyway. The move will save around $700,000 in wages, but will cost the city about $1 million in reimbursements to groups who had already booked the centres. Still, this should teach those community groups to think twice before they squawk about the mayor's tax increases.
Body Shop cosmetic store founder and social and environmental activist Anita Roddick has died at the age of 64. Long before environmentalism became trendy and everyone from Stephen Harper to Exxon started painting themselves green, Roddick really walked the walk. Safe home, Anita.
Photo by undomestic from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.
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I think there's something wrong about voting from behind a mask. I think voting is not just about picking representatives but is a demonstration - a celebration, indeed, of citizenship.
Election locations should be staffed in such a way that there is always one woman on site and that should be the end of it. How does Elections Canada/Quebec/Ontario figure that these citizens get passports, OHIP cards etc. Photo ID should be mandatory - not everyone has a passport or driving licence but everyone has an OHIP card for god's sake.
The problem is that everyone thinks the law requires photo ID to vote, when, in fact, it doesn't. It's an incredibly sloppy law that doesn't actually say what everyone thinks it says. The Chief Electoral Officer's interpretation of the law is the correct one.
Bill C-31's actual requirements are:
In other words, according to (b), the poll clerks don't actually have to verify your photo ID against your face. They just have to verify that you have two pieces of ID (both with your name and one with your address).
Under that criteria, it's perfectly acceptable for you to roll up to the polling station in your best Jedi hooded robe or Star Wars stormtrooper outfit, cough up a birth certificate and credit card statement, and you should get to vote.
Parliament would have to amend the law to require photo identification (and no substitutes), and then everyone will be happy.
Chris - you're absolutely right, the interpretation is not excluded by the law - however, it doesn't instruct Elections officials that a voter is allowed to screen their face, even from female officials. However, I understand EC have said that costumes will not be allowed, so no stormtrooping for you!
From the point of view of ascertaining any Elections law violations, being able to accurately determine who voted is important. For instance where a masked person votes more than once using different credentials but different accomplices swearing out an oath for that person, it would be important that when the issue came to court that the defendent be identifiable since the grounds for arrest would be that the clerk had remembered the same face twice.
I guess my issue is that C-31 was supposed to deal with this - otherwise why the amendments - and the House of Commons Committee that recommended it to the full House should be made to account for how this happened.
Not everyone has a new OHIP card ... mine is still the old red and white card with no photo ID.
I've still got the ol' Red & White myself. It's 17 years old...and looks it.
In a sane world we'd require verification of photo ID through actual visual inspection of the associated face. But I wouldn't count on EC to be the judge of what is and is not a religion. After all, in the 2001 Canadian census, 20,000 people self-identified as Jedi. I'm sure at least one of them would be willing to launch a Charter challenge in order to point out the ridiculousness of this law. And of relying on EC officials to determine what is and is not appropriate ethnocultural dress.
I can't for the life of me figure out why a person shouldn't be allowed to wear a Hallowe'en mask while voting, never mind the clothes that they habitually wear in public.
To vote, for God's sake, they insist that you stick your head in a cardboard box. I don't see the affront to democracy in being fully clothed while doing so.
Great, let's make it easier for hateful socially conservative people to vote.
The more I think about the fact that guest #8's bigotry is anonymous, the funnier it gets.