Tories Accused Of Repressing Democracy

There was a controversy on Friday as the Conservative Party was accused of diabolically trying to deny people the right to vote. Ironically this little dust up happened in the same building where I voted for the first time in a federal election, the University Center at the University of Guelph where I voted for Stockwell Day to be the next Prime Minister. On Friday Elections Canada's Guelph office had set up a special ballot voting booth on campus so that students would be able to vote on campus throughout the election. The Conservatives complained that this violated election law, and Elections Canada admitted that the poll was not authorized and violated their own rules. I wonder if they will call the RCMP to raid their Guelph office.

This advance poll made it easier for students to vote at their convenience, but did not extend the same convenience to the rest of the general population. EC has said that the ballots already cast will be valid, but they are going to shut down the special voting booth. What it comes down to is that if you want to set up a mobile poll to run throughout the election in one area, then you should extend that right to all areas (unless we are talking about a care home). Anyone can vote at any time during an election on a special ballot by visiting your local Elections Canada office. There are advance polls where you can vote if you are busy on election day. It is no more difficult for a student to get to a ballot box than a parent with a full-time job. Giving one group more convenience than the other is not equitable treatment.

For Ignatieff to start complaining that we are turning into Egypt is borderline insane. He's opportunistically trying to plug into something that was trending on Twitter a few weeks ago, because Canada is nothing like Egypt in terms of Democracy. This is not a matter of trying to prevent people from voting, it is about having different rules for different groups. There are Conservatives among the student body at the U of G, many at the Agricultural College. But it is true that young people are more likely to vote Liberal, because they are young and lack life experience. People are more likely to become Conservative as they age and begin to understand the world.

There should be a table at the center of every University campus to register people to vote, but there's no reason to have this mobile polling station at the University in the middle of the campaign. If you do, you have to set them up in communities across the polling district (which substantially multiplies the cost of an election). Also, one of the reasons we encourage people to wait until election day to vote is that it is at the end of the campaign. Some people change their minds, and there is an advantage to letting the campaign run its course before everyone votes. You can learn new information. Shouldn't we encourage people to learn as much as possible before they vote?