Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Blame C-23: Advance Poll Woes in New Canadian Government Election

Compromising The Canadian Federal Election Advanced Polls

by Dragonslayer - PEJ News


10 October 2015

The Federal Election is being pushed as the most important ever. If so I would expect this graph to take a radical turn to the upside. For that to happen you have to push yourself like never before and get out and vote. That isn't going to be easy because everything is being done to discourage you from voting.

I went to the advance polling station on first and second days. The first day had about a 3 hour wait to vote.

There was only one person processing voters and taking about 30 minutes to process one person. I have voted every election since I was old enough to vote. Never has it taken more than 10 minutes even when the parking lot was full and the room crowded with voters.

The next day was the same with a slightly shorter line. As of this writing I have not voted.What I have learned over the years is that the fewer the number of voters, the more likely it is for the party to the right to get elected.

All across Canada the vote is being frustrated by intolerable line ups and poll station locations that make it impossible for many without transportation to vote. Many polls are located away from buss lines and require infirm people to walk long distance to the polls. Some Elections Canada offices are located far away from the urban centres access is difficult.

Why is it that no advanced polling stations have mail out forms so that people who can't wait can take them home and mail them out? Why is it that there is only one person processing at advanced polls when they have about 10 people there? Why are not more of them processing instead of watching everyone vote?

The biggest security risk is the sabotage of the election process by the design of the process by those who obviously want people to give up and walk away. If they spent a fraction of the PR money used to get people to vote on making the vote run smoothly there would be many more voting.

I was told they were monitoring the situation on the first day. On the second day I asked how many gave up and walked out of the line and left without voting? They all looked at me as if I was stupid...That is not their job...So why was I lied to the day before? Nobody was monitoring.

When I was there there was about 1 person a minute leaving with a voter card in hand. They didn't vote. Advanced pools are open for 8 hours per day. If the same number leave each day for the 4 days of advanced polling we get 1person/min X 60 min/hr X 8 hr/day X 4days = 1,920 people who didn't vote at one polling station. Well that is probably too many but even if 1 person every 2 minutes that would be 960 people not voting per voting station.

I called Elections Canada and after about 45 min run around I got that they don't know how many advanced voting stations there are in Canada. Online they say 400 districts and on the phone only 300. How many advanced polling stations in each district would be a guess at an average of 2 per district would be a minimum of 300 X 2 = 600. So 1,920 people/station X 600 stations = 1,152,000 voters that gave up and went away. Even if I divide that by 4, I get 288,000 people who didn't vote because of long line ups.

Certainly this is a serious problem. It could decide the election. The fewer the number of voters the more likely we get a right wing government.

Their may or may not be intentional sabotage of the election, but the long waiting to vote times are seriously compromising the integrity of the results.

All day yesterday and today I was listening to CBC radio reporting on the same long waits happening all across Canada. Every advanced polling station only had one person doing the voter processing. Elections Canada apparently isn't concerned about a crooked election. I think everyone should be hopping mad. I know I am. Vote...please.

UPDATE: Sunday Oct 11, 2015


Check out the CBC news article "B.C. Election Worker Quits Due To Long Line-Ups". At least four temporary elections workers at the community centre have also quit.


UPDATE Monday Oct 12, 2015


Went to the Elections Canada office in Victoria to vote. The Saanich one was too far away for me. They tried to process me after 30 min wait as a special voter. First they had me fill out a form even though I had a voter card to show I was registered. They asked for ID and I produced a drivers license. Then they put my name on an envelope and gave me another envelope with a ballot inside. I asked if the ballot envelope was going to be sent somewhere else inside the envelope with my name on it and they said yes. When I complained that that did not constitute a secret ballot, I was assured that numerous people who I didn't know would be viewing the separation of the two envelopes and the deposit of the ballot envelope into a real ballot box. I said that it all amounts to trusting others to be honest and that a true secret ballot would prevent trusting being part of the equation. There was no reason that the voting box at that station could not be a real voting box in which an anonymous ballot in an envelop void of any connection to the person voting could not have been implemented. The fact that there was an obvious attempt to create a non secret ballot process is enough to question the entire process as suspicious.

I grabbed my stuff without voting and went to the advanced voting station in my own district only to find that the line up was even longer than the first 2 days. The same security person that was there the day before said the line was shorter. That really pi__ed me off.

Well lets see if the polls on election day are any less crooked.... to be continued.

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