This glitch is growing. Complaints of voters being de-registered, of not receiving their voter information cards or of having the wrong information on those cards have been reported across the country.
After writing about a few of those examples in Vancouver, I asked readers to write me if they had trouble with their voter registration.
I got dozens of emails in reply — some as far away as Toronto. Their emails are still coming in.
A few examples:
Sheila French, from the Langley-Aldergrove riding, writes:
“My husband’s voting card came; mine did not. I was unable to check my voting registration either online or by phone with Elections Canada because ‘you cannot be confirmed at that address.’ I went to my local EC office, where it was confirmed that someone with my full name and birthdate was registered in Whitby, Ontario. I have never lived there! I have lived at my current Langley address since 1989 and have voted federally and provincially from there. Curious?”
Val MacDonald, who votes in the New-Westminster-Burnaby riding, also lost her place on the voting lists to a phantom doppelgänger:
“I was told by our local NDP campaign headquarters that I was not registered and immediately looked into it. Sure enough I was not on the list. I waited and checked back on the Elections Canada website a week later and my name still did not come up. Finally I went to the electoral district and they could not find my name either ... I have lived at the same address for nearly 40 years and I have never missed voting in any election. Anyway, it turned out that there is another Val MacDonald in another province with very similar information and the electoral officers thought I was dropped off the list as looking like a duplicate.”
A couple of tax consultants wrote in to suggest that people who had not checked the box on their tax returns that forwards their personal information to Elections Canada might have not been registered to vote. But Lyell Plamondon, from the Nanaimo-Ladysmith riding, checked off the box on his tax return and still found himself unregistered.
“Although our daughter received her voter registration card, my wife and I did not. We are all at the same address. Wondering why we hadn’t received our cards, I called Elections Canada yesterday and was told that my wife and I were not registered. We reside in Nanaimo and have been at our current address since we moved from Saskatoon over four years ago. After explaining to them that we voted from Nanaimo in the last federal election and have not changed addresses, plus the fact
that we give CRA at income tax time the OK to give our names, addresses, date of births and citizenship to Elections Canada to update the National Register of Electors, I asked them to investigate further what was going on.
After a few minutes they notified me that we were registered to vote at our old Saskatoon address ... It makes us wonder if the Conservative Party has anything to do with this. Remember Robo-Call?”
Like Plamondon, Kelvin Chan, in Vancouver Centre, checked off his tax return and still found himself deregistered. He harboured the same suspicions — despite once having worked for Elections Canada. He wrote:
“I’m 30. I’ve lived in the same house since I was five. I’ve voted in all eligible civic, provincial, federal elections. I worked with Elections Canada for the last federal election. And I’ve checked the correct boxes on my tax forms to make sure I am registered to vote. But like your article in The Vancouver Sun, I find myself in the same position as all those other young people, baffled at why I wasn’t registered ... However, like my experience when working at Elections Canada, (I found) that many people don’t have the appropriate ID when they go to the polls … even though having not received a voter’s card should have been a red flag. I hope there is an investigation into this. I feel this may be a deliberate attempt at fraud.”
Others who found themselves de-registered showed remarkable perseverance in their attempts to re-register. They had to. Gregory Hum, in Vancouver Centre, tried several times to register and in doing so got a surprising admission from an Elections Canada employee. After trying to register several times online, he finally did so at an Elections Canada office, where he was told he was registered as living in Burnaby.
“Interestingly/humorously, when I called the Elections Canada office about this, the person on the phone told me, ‘This has been happening a lot, it happened to me to be frank.’”
Gail Morton, a retired teacher from Port Alberni, did not receive her voter information card (while her husband did), so tried twice online to register, unsuccessfully. She contacted Elections Canada and had an officer there do a search for her name. After several tries, he finally found her — registered to an address in Saskatchewan, where she has never lived. She had him register at her address in Port Alberni. Just to make sure, she went to an advance poll Friday to vote, and found she was still not registered.
“I had to re-re-register right there. I finally voted, but I’m just so exhausted and mad with the whole ordeal. What I fear is that these kinds of problems could discourage a lot of people from voting.”
Exactly. In an election that promises to be as close as this one, every vote counts. In passing its compounding errors off as “very isolated” or assuring voters that all will be well with them once they reach their polling stations, Elections Canada misses the point. It’s supposed to be the grease in the election process: it’s become the grit.
With voter turnouts as low as they are, do we really need more sand in the machine?
Original Article
Source: vancouversun.com/
Author: Pete McMartin
No comments:
Post a Comment