Voter Suppression Canada

The good news about having the Republican Party governing from Parliament Hill is that Canada gets to have its own voter suppression scandal. Yes, that’s right. Ring-Ring: "Wanna vote? Unfortunately your polling station is too busy , please go vote somewhere else, somewhere far far away, we recommend the Planet Tatooine." Yes, Canadian voters of a liberal bent received calls during the May 2011 election telling them their polling station had been relocated. Elections Canada, aided by the RCMP, is now investigating and the Republi, oops, I mean, er, Conservatives are in plausible deniability mode.

Of course we’re just rookies in the game compared to our southern neightbours. The U.S has a lengthy history of voter suppression strategies, from poll taxes to literacy tests to current efforts by States to require valid photo I.D.s to register to vote. The photo I.D. efforts are being done to “ensure the sanctity of the vote,” said Sam Brownback, the Governor of Kansas, demonstrating his apparent lack of concern for the 620,000 Kansas residents who, according to the NY Times,lack a government ID. Meanwhile the 2011 bill in Texas pushing for photo I.D.s won’t recognize—you just gotta love this!—student I.D.s but will recognize handgun licenses. Giddy-up, shoot ‘em up, vote ‘em up. Rawhide.

Canada? There just ain’t a whole lot of voter suppression history up here. While we do have the possibility of catching up and creating our very own Canadian culture around voter suppression, there are some structural challenges that have to be acknowledged. In the States, many of the election officials are themselves partisan, elected candidates. Yikes! And the elections are funded locally, so some jurisdictions simply don’t have sufficient funds—similar to education--to do a good job. Despite these obvious advantages that the U.S. has over Canadian voter suppression strategies, Harper’s Conservatives are a diligent bunch and won’t take high voter turn-out lying down. No siree. Ethics aren’t in the way. They’ve already pleaded guilty to funnelling money illegally to support tv advertising during 2006 campaign. They’ve got the robo calls happening. And damn, if Harper hadn’t canned the long gun registry he could’ve used those I.D.s to target his kind of voters. He must be kicking himself. Wanna vote? Show me that long gun license, pardner.