Source:
CBC NewsVoters across the country had difficulties casting their ballots in the federal election Tuesday.
According to an Elections Canada official, many people were unaware of a new rule that requires voters to present either one piece of identification showing their name and address or two pieces of ID, each of which shows their name and at least one of which shows their address.
. . .
At Dalhousie University in Halifax,
nearly two-thirds of the students showing up to cast ballots on campus were turned away because they didn't have the necessary signed form from their university residence stating their address or were off-campus students, said Mark Coffin, vice-president of education on the Dalhousie student council. The form is the only way for some students to prove they live in the area, as many of them have IDs with an address from another region.
Read more:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canadavotes/story/2008/10/14/poll-problems.html
This is, of course, precisely what Harper probably wanted these new rules to accomplish.
The short version on these new rules for the non-Canadians: In elections up here, we're basically automatically registered when an election is called. Voter registration is tied to tax records, so a few weeks into an election campaign everyone who's submitted their taxes at some point gets a card shipped to the address they placed on their tax forms. This card shows the time and place of the polling station, and is used as proof of voter registration there. In past elections - at least all the ones I've ever gone to in the last decade - this card was the
only documentation necessary in order to vote; you hand it to the poll workers, head to the poll in question and do your thing. There's never been any reason for this to change up here - all the horror stories about thousands of people flooding the wrong districts, voting multiple times, blah blah blah simply haven't happened, and universal registration made it easier not to get caged.
This time, the election requires proof of address in the form of various other pieces of documentation. The silly part of this comes from the fact that
the Elections Canada registration confirmation with your address on it, derived from your tax records, is not a valid proof of address!It's possible to vote, at least in theory, if you lack these; you can jump through a few hoops with the pollworkers to confirm your registration and the ilke, or you can have another registered elector who knows you vouch for you (and
only you - every voter who wasn't himself vouched for is allowed to do this once), after which you swear and oath and can go ahead and vote. I saw both done today, although either is more difficult to pull off for constantly shuffling-around students, especially when several thousand are simultaneously turned away for things like this.
Would I be surprised, in the least, to see that two-thirds figure repeated at every university campus in the country? I would not. Bang! There goes most of the already-damaged student vote, and I think most of you already get the fact that cutting voter turnout traditionally benefits the conservatives, whether they be Conservative or Republican.
Goddammit.