All Canadians Have a Right to Vote! Bill-31 Disenfranchises! Tell Dion, Senators & Liberal MPs to Protect Liberal Democracy!

Bill C-31 is one of the most disgraceful pieces of legislation ever passed through the Commons. It is now before the Senate where I hope the senators have the courage to correct its two most greivous faults: the disenfranchisement of the marginalised and the creation of a Big Brother invasion of privacy. These issues have been roundly condemned by the BC Civil Liberties Association, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Students, among others. The Liberal position in favour of the bill was adopted before Dion became leader and I am hopeful that a former poli sci professor like himself will revise this stand and instruct Liberal senators to fix it.

On the 1st point, of the obligatory official photo ID, this will disenfranchise those who don't have one. And whereas until now, those without ID could be registered to vote by swearing an oath to an appropriate commissioner, such as any lawyer in BC, now the person acting as commissioner has to live in the same riding as the voter and can only vouch for one individual total! Until now concerned lawyers who work with the poor and homeless but who may not live in the same riding as them would register a number of citizens to vote, but since that would be impossible under C-31, many citizens would be deprived of their most fundamental democratic right!!! It's a reintroduction of the "property qualifications" - we got rid of them at the turn ot the 20th century - now there seems to be an effort to again disenfranchise fellow citizens just because they're poor. Sickening.

Secondly, including citizens' full birth dates can lead to any number of abuses: a name, address and birthday is a gift to fraudsters.

Why are the Bloc and Tories in favour? The worse people's interactions with the State, the more suspicious they are and the less willing to identify themselves to public authorities. Wherever authorities wish to restrict the marginalised from voting they come up with rules that involve such self-identification: see Republican tactics in the USA.

The Bloc are in favour because they want to discourage all the pro-Canadian immigrants from voting: that's why the PQ changed Quebec's Election Act in this way in 1999. Immigrants are likelier to be poor and also to have come from oppressive regimes where one tries to avoid State interaction as much as possible.

The Tories are in favour because the poor and immigrants vote against them. And because Patrick Muttart wants to use the birth information to run some of his voter segmenting programs and target likely Tories, rather than try to speak to all voters.

But why would any Liberal, any small-l liberal worthy of the title, support this legislation?

I worked on the 1995 referendum here in Quebec, and other campaigns, as have many who read Liblogs. The amount of fraud in campaigns is infinitesimal, except when organised by the State, like Quebec Elections Office in the 1995 referendum.

As far as actual voter fraud goes, there was one case in 2006, an American who publicised his own fraud so as to show it could happen.In 2004, there were no cases and in 2000 election, there were three cases. That's it, four cases in three elections! Jean-Pierre Kingsley, Chief Electoral Officer when the law was introduced, has stated: "I have no evidence that would lead me to believe that there has been any fraud in this country, based on the testimony I heard." Yet there's all this fear-mongering about fraud! Where's the empirical evidence?! Zilch.

Remember one of the principles of liberalism: It's better to have 10 guilty men go free than have one innocent man imprisoned. Conservatives and nationalists may be willing to deprive the poor and immigrants of their right to vote, but any liberal should err on the side of open democracy and the infinitesimal risk of increased fraud rather than an oppressively closed system which is guaranteed to deny some citizens the electoral rights.

Check out this testimony from the Commons Committee, where the Quebec Chief Elections Officer (CEO) admits that because of the Quebec law, the homeless can't and don't vote:
   
Mr. Yvon Godin,MP:
    Is it possible that you said earlier that homeless people who don't have ID don't even go because they know they won't be able to vote? Do you have those numbers? Have you studied this?

Mr. Marcel Blanchet, CEO:
    Unfortunately, we don't have any figures on that. Of course, there are homeless people in Montreal, but probably far fewer than out West, probably because of the weather.

Educate yourself through the following links and lobby Dion, your MP and all and sundry to correct this flawed bill.

http://www.bccla.org/othercontent/06globeandmail.htm

http://www.parl.gc.ca/LEGISINFO/index.asp?Language=E&Chamber=N&StartList=A&EndList=Z&Session=14&Type=0&Scope=I&query=4851&List=stat