Election Reforms Are An Obstruction To Voters

>Door-to-door enumeration was eliminated in favour of a "permanent voter's list." <p>Nailed one of my complaints. I was a DRO in the last provincial election; instead of paying Nova Scotians to do a proper enumeration we had our money wasted on that federal fu@kup which would put the four occupants of a single house in four different polls, none of them correct. (The province decided to compound that by changing the boundaries of the polls and providing us no boundary descriptions, not even a map - so none of us knew for certain where our polls were ... I ended up with people coming 10 minutes before the poll closed with paper saying, falsely, they voted in my poll and I had no paper to prove they didn't. Big fracas.*) <p>The municipality decided then and there the federal list is not worth the price - after all, the only prompting to update it is the income tax form, it's voluntary, and always months behind - they just did an enumeration for the autumn municipals. <p>Frankly I think it's an ettempt to screw things up so there's an excuse to give us a "cure" like electronic voting. <p>*How did I know? It just happened that I checked the map in the RO's office the day before, and we got into a "discussion" over where the boundary departed from some road - ie whose house was in and whose was out; there was no distinguishing feature on the map. The RO first tried to tell me to go by the voters' cards, but I'd experienced the accuracy of those things before. In the end I was assured our revising officers would have the necessary information. They had nothing. That portion of my boundary happened to be the one nearest these voters - and they were at least a kilometre outside. The chief electoral officer ultimately exonerated my actions, then I had a six-month fight to get my pay because they forgot to ask for my SIN before I did the work. All that for a whopping $145. Don't think I'm fool enough to do that job ever again.

Kwantize,

I absolutely agree about the electronic voting "cure-all" that will likely be touted and the equipment will be provided by? say, someone like Lockheed Martin of Canada maybe?

This election, I had a voting station over 10kms away from where I live assigned to me when there's one about 5 minutes away that I voted at last Federal election. I had to fill out forms and there were other people that made the 10km journey to be told they had to go back to the area they live in and register at the station!!!! If anyone was sitting on the voting (electric) fence they sure as hell would say stick it rather than run all over the back 40 trying to make their vote count.

Beware the Ides of March! This is all a recipie for a travesty of democracy! Using the idiological excuse of "cost-cutting measures" in support of minimalist government, the parties that voted in favour of the permanent voter list are counting on all these mix-ups so that, come election time, their party name is likened to a brand-namein the monds of citizens. "Vote cons," that's all you need to remember.
Without knowing anything about a party's values, people are encouraged to vote for a party based on sound-byte advertisements. This was, after all, what Brian Mulroney was advised to do in 1988 in support of Free Trade: sell the concept to the masses and do no try to educate them on this topic.
We cannot, moreover, forget who controls the media in this country: multinational corporations, hence the "spin" created by various sound-byte interviewers.
Finally, these scenarios sound dangerously close to what occurred in Florida during the 2000 U.S. elections. The vote-rigging, which e-voting would encourage, counted on the dead voters, moved voters, etc. so that the pool of eligible voters became so much more smaller. And, of course, no citizen is going to challenge the fact that they did not get to vote because they probably would not wish to spend the money in court challenging it.

I urge you all to read Greg Palast's "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" because his book exposes how dangerously close we are walking the line wih American-style politics.

Thanks Anon. Do you have a link to Greg's site?

Kevin

---
"Love actually, is all around us" --From the movie Love Actually.

I greatly appreciate the feedback and the description of your experience. I'd be very happy if people could send me the nitty gritty of their voting experience — and that of their friends and acquaintances — as this is a totally neglected area in the discussion on voter turnout. You can talk about "voter apathy" endlessly and about the flaws in our first-past-the-post system, but systemic voter obstruction is a taboo subject, it seems. (Even if we already know that prop rep is a good solution to an awful lot of what ails us electorally, even then voters would have to be registered, and then, too, the length of the campaign matters greatly.)

I had an interesting experience yesterday on the Vancouver radio station CKNW where I was invited to discuss poor voter turnout (only slightly over 60% this time around) with Duff Conacher, from Democracy Watch. The host Bill Good was interested in what I had (or tried to) say, but Conacher would have non of it! "Only 5%" of non-voting is caused by structural problems (lack of proper enumeration, ever-shortening campaign periods etc. things that I raised in my article), he claimed, concentrating all his energy on voter disillusionment with "politics" and "lying politicians" as the most significant cause and the ONLY ONE that should be discussed. I hadn't thought that "voter apathy" and "voter obstruction" are mutually exclusive, so had to battle Conacher to get my few points across. Luckily two callers (of the three that called) validated my points from their personal experience, one of them a poll clerk. Yet Conacher insisted on the "only 5 — 10%" as small potatoes, not worth discussing — and yet 5% amounts to over a million Canadians adn 10% is twice that

There is a good critical study about the consequences of the loss of voter enumeration, done by Jerome H. Black for the Institute for Research in Public Policy (www.irpp.org), titled "From enumeration to the national register of electors: An account and an evaluation," in which he concludes that "By and large, the analysis indicates that the permanent list approach has contributed to diminishing voter turnout and has accentuated existing participation gaps across social groups."

Back in 2001 I had written to Jerome Black in detail about my experiences in the 2000 election campaign, when I was a manager of David Orchard's run in the Prince Albert riding.
I was pleased to discover that Black arrived at the same conclusions in his scholarly paper that house-to-house enumeration is essential for accurate voter registration, and that the state must assume the responsibility for getting people on the list, rather than putting the burden — along with huge obstacles — on the voter.

(If and when I can figure out how to post my letter on the 2000 election campaign on this list, I will do so.)

I hope to hear more about people's experiences and would appreciate hearing from others who worked in the polling stations. All this experience is important "anecdotal evidence" which might lead to a serious study on the hidden dimension of the ever lower voter turnout in Canada.

Marjaleena Repo

mrepo@sasktel.net
201 Elm Street
Saskatoon,SK, S7J 0G8

(306)244-9724 fax: (306)244-0606

Thanks Marjaleena for taking the time to post here. Until now I've only heard of you Some good things and some bad things. The bad things I heard was just people who were upset that you didn't back David Orchard to join or support the NDP or the new PC (Progressive Canadian Party).

The good things I've heard is that you are a pro-canadian and believe in an independent Canada. People I've talked and myself all enjoy reading your material.

To submit an article you just click that "submit" option at the top of the page. You can put it in Plain Old Text format or HTML Format.

I know I look forward to more of your material on this site. Thanks!.

Kevin

---
"Love actually, is all around us" --From the movie Love Actually.