What Canadians need to know about our voting system

What Canadians need to know about our voting system

Postby Oscar » Mon Jun 29, 2015 9:36 pm

REPO: URGENT ALERT: Our voting system explained

From: Marjaleena Repo
Sent: Monday, June 29, 2015 5:20 PM
Subject: URGENT ALERT: Our voting system explained

Dear Friends,

I recently distributed a version of this article at a Council of Canadians "Go Vote!" meeting in Saskatoon, and I am glad I did, as there was no discussion at all by the panelists about what it takes to vote in Canada today! Since that time I have come across misleading information of various kinds in the print media and in interviews on radio and television by people who should know better, and when alerted to the errors, corrections have not been forthcoming. Below I am trying to explain as clearly as possible what has happened to our voting system, and I hope that I am able to impress the readers with the fact that the essence of the ability to vote is to be registered and to have a document with a street address, the latter being the crucial one. Please circulate far and wide, so we don't lose voters by default!

I welcome your questions, comments and suggestions.

Marjaleena

- - - -

“It’s the street address, stupid!” or What Canadians need to know about our voting system


By Marjaleena Repo June 29, 2015

Until 1997, Canada had a world-class door-to-door voter registration (enumeration) system.The state took responsibility for registering voters, and consequently voter registrations reached nearly 100% levels.

This system was eliminated in 1997 by the Liberal government as a cost cutting measure, heavily supported by the opposition Reform Party with its “less government” ideology. Enumeration was replaced by a National Registry of Voters, which required voters to get themselves registered, in the style of US voters.

The first election without enumeration was in 2000 and it was a mess, as people found great difficulty getting registered. This is also the year when voter participation numbers started to fall, from the previous over 70% to below that and dropping further in each election. (Research has shown that the loss of enumeration had a direct relationship to the falling rates. See Jerome H. Black, From enumeration to the national register of electors: an account and an evaluation, 2003, see [ http://irpp.org/research-studies/choices-vol9-no7/ ])

In 2007, another disaster for the voters: Harper government instituted tough new voter ID requirements, supposedly to prevent fraud but in effect to prevent voting by people who could not be counted on to vote “the correct way.” You were now required to have personal ID with a street address on it. People in rural areas, including reserves, with postal boxes as their only and legal addresses, found themselves unable to vote as they could not show the required street address. Vouching, the method of an elector vouching for another’s identity, eg. a family member’s or neighbour’s, also became more restricted in that you could only vouch for one person, and not several as previously. An Elections Canada study of the 2008 elections showed that roughly 500,000 Canadians were turned away from the polls, because they did not have the correct ID or were not able to be vouched! We can all imagine what difference these votes could have made. (In Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River riding alone, 5,000 less voters were able to cast their vote in 2008 than in 2006, prior to the changes, which resulted in voter turnout dropping from 58.43% to 44.75%. Scrutineers for David Orchard's campaign in 2008 in the riding reported that on some reserves dozens of voters were turned away because they only had a postal box or rural route address and not the required street address. We were not able to verify the full amount of votes that David Orchard lost due to the vote denial, but the drop of numbers of voters between two elections speaks volumes.)

With the difficulty in voter registration and in being able to present the right kind of voter ID, voter participation nationally dropped further, hitting the low of 58.8 % in 2008. In reality voter participation is even lower than that, as we no longer know how many potential voters we have, only how many have been able to register, whereas in the voter enumeration system numbers of potential voters and registered voters were nearly identical.

In 2014, the Harper government made voting even more difficult with the wrongly named Fair Elections Act (Bill C-23) which, among other things, eliminated the use of voter information cards, which up till that time could be used as secondary identification. Also, vouching which was used by countless Canadians as a safety valve when they didn’t have the required street address ID, was first abolished, and then, after huge public pressure, kept but made more difficult: the vouchee now has to have two personal IDs, instead of the previous one. (Media reports and interviews falsely claim that vouching has been cancelled; some also claim that you can be vouched for your identity, when you can only be vouched for your street address.)

The latest “reform” was pushed through, with lies and falsehoods, by minister Pierre Poilievre and his colleagues in the Parliament and the Senate, who claimed massive voter fraud for which they had no proof and spread the misinformation that huge numbers of Canadians came to vote without any ID, whereas the problem was that they did not have ID with a street address. Poilievre stated, countless times, that anyone with a treaty card or student ID card could vote, when in reality these never have street addresses and therefore do not qualify! The media spread the Big Lie in spades. (Only a miniscule percentage of Canadians at any given time have no ID whatsoever, due to a variety of personal misfortunes.)

Our 2015 election will show the results of voter obstruction, Canadian style, following closely American-style voter suppression, which the Republican Party has orchestrated, state by state, making voting not just difficult but impossible for many likely Democratic party voters, and leading to countless lawsuits across the country. (If you google “voter suppression US” you will get a motherlode of information on the direction that the Harper government is slavishly following.)

What now?

In this year’s election it is a foregone conclusion that fewer people than ever can vote — and therefore the Conservatives need fewer votes to win! We must work defensively, while campaigning to restore the previous voter-friendly door-to-door enumeration, and that means that all need to make sure that they and the people they know and associate with, will have ID with a street address on it. A driver’s license is a gold standard, but next to it we can now have provincial ID cards in all provinces (I hope) which are low cost (free to seniors in Saskatchewan, for instance), and relatively quick to obtain, and should be gotten well in advance of the fall election.

Those who have ID with a postal box number or rural route as their address, need to immediately contact Elections Canada to find out what they need to do in their predicament. Everybody needs to register or to find out if they are registered. You can reach Elections Canada toll free at 1-800-463-6868 or via http://www.elections.ca . (Elections Canada’s website has the “must have” list of acceptable IDs, which all should study up on.)

Political campaigners and activists of all kinds need to pay full attention to helping people vote, rather than simply urging and imploring them to vote, as if the severe obstructions did not exist! They need to have all the necessary information at their fingertips, where and how to get the “right” ID. There is no point in wringing our hands about “voter apathy” and the low voter participation rates, if we don’t recognize what our fellow citizens are up against and assist them in overcoming the obstacles!

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Marjaleena Repo has been a campaign manager in two federal election campaigns, in 2000 and 2008, and has considerable experience with the deterioration of our voting system.


Marjaleena Repo
mrepo@sasktel.net
306-244-9724.
Mailing address: 201 Elm Street, Saskatoon, S7J 0G8
Oscar
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