Block the vote

When I first posted about Elections Canada's last-minute decision to cancel an advance poll at the University of Toronto, I'd optimistically assumed that it was an operational decision of Elections Canada rather than one encouraged by any political party. Sadly, that assumption turned out to be wrong:

(According to student organizer Paul Bretscher,) "(t)he Tony Ianno campaign informed us that it was Liberal legal council in Ottawa that had filed something with Elections Canada that resulted in these polling locations being removed from campus."

Ianno campaign manager Tom Allison says Elections Canada agreed that the impromptu polling sites weren't allowed.

On a quick reading of the special ballot provisions of the Canada Elections Act, it's hard to see any merit to the apparent objection. The statute doesn't distinguish between permanent and "impromptu" polling locations, and doesn't offer any specific authorization or prohibition toward the campus procedure. Section 231 implicitly provides that any elector who wishes to use the special ballot procedure may do so - which suggests that there shouldn't be any strict limitation on where the procedure is applied.

And most importantly, section 179 grants the Chief Electoral Officer discretion to adapt all existing procedures in order to execute the intent of the special balloting procedure. Surely that intent must be to facilitate voting through means other than the standard ballot, rather than to limit access to the polls.

Unfortunately, that seems to be precisely the effect for students at the U of T. Those who live close enough to the campus will still be able to vote easily enough using the standard ballot process - assuming, of course, that polls near the campus are equipped to deal with a rush of students who'd expected to vote elsewhere. Meanwhile, those who are away from their home ridings will have to track down a local returning officer before the end of tomorrow in order to go through exactly the same special ballot process which would otherwise have been available to them on campus.

Note also that similar special balloting went ahead on other campuses - and there doesn't seem to have been any lack of interest from students in making use of these polls. Which begs the question of whether all those students will now see their votes called into question if the procedure used wasn't authorized under the Canada Elections Act.

It's truly sad that on the Day of Action where groups are making an effort to get younger Canadians interested in voting, a roadblock thrown up by the Liberal Party is getting in the way of a significant number of those same voters. Hopefully the move won't dissuade too many of those who planned to vote on campus - and the voters will remember which party considers a procedural objection more important than allowing young Canadians to cast their votes as planned.