Elections Canada Budgets $1M For Aboriginal ID Issue In Fede

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Elections Canada Budgets $1M For Aboriginal ID Issue In Federal Vote

[ http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/07 ... 33030.html ]

CBC Posted: 01/07/2015 6:08 pm EST Updated: 01/07/2015 10:59 pm EST

Elections Canada has budgeted up to $1 million to help First Nations cope with new voter-identification rules that could make it harder for indigenous people to cast ballots in this year’s federal election.

The agency is hiring the Assembly of First Nations to warn its 634 bands and others about the tougher rules, which are doing away with “vouching,” commonly used on reserves where relatively few voters have identity cards that show their home address as required.

Previous federal elections have allowed a second person to vouch for the identity of a voter who lacks documents that contain an address. But last year’s controversial Fair Elections Act essentially ended the practice after the Harper government said it was open to abuse.

The act substitutes a new procedure — called “attestation” — which makes it more difficult and complicated for a second voter to declare that a prospective voter resides in a riding.

An estimated 120,000 Canadians relied on vouching in the 2011 federal election. Critics of the Fair Elections Act warned the elimination of vouching would particularly hurt First Nations communities, where ID with addresses is hard to obtain, and where election-turnout rates are already low, about 16 percentage points below the national rate.

Any barrier an issue

Elections Canada wants the Assembly of First Nations to examine “the access barriers faced by First Nations electors, related to registration and voting in a federal general election,” says a sole-source notice posted this week.

The contract is worth $475,000 until March 31 next year, covering the scheduled 2015 federal election and aftermath, with an optional $500,000 for the next election.

“We continue to be concerned about low voter turnout amongst the First Nation community,” Peter Dinsdale, an assembly spokesman, said in an interview. “Any barrier that could be raised, such as vouching, is an issue.”

“We’ll see if [the Fair Elections Act] is going to make it worse. Vouching has become an important tool for First Nations.… ID is absolutely a barrier.”

Elections Canada spokesman John Enright said that ID is always a problem for First Nations, but there are now some “significant changes” from the Fair Elections Act that will affect several groups, including the homeless, youth and people in nursing homes, as well as First Nations communities.

The agency is planning a series of outreach projects, including through the Assembly of First Nations, to spread the message that people without ID at polling stations “don’t have to give up and go away,” Enright said.

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Voter Pledge: I ❤ democracy. Pledge to vote in the 2015 Federal Election»

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January 10, 2015

TAKE THE VOTER PLEDGE! Voting is at the heart of our democracy.

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It does. Every vote matters.

In the last federal election, just a handful of voters (6,201 to be precise) made the difference in electing a majority government for the Harper Conservatives.

In that same election, 9,434,184 eligible Canadian voters didn’t cast a ballot.

It’s time for change. And it starts with you. Show your love for Canada’s democracy by taking the Voter Pledge – and together we’ll vote in the new progressive government we all need and deserve.

Take the Voter Pledge:

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