THE #VOTERSUPPRESSION BILL - ANOTHER HIGH MORAL FIBER CONS MP - LAURIE HAWN - FOLLOWS BRAD BUTT INTO MISLEADING PARLIAMENT WITH OUTRIGHT FALSEHOODS ON FICTITIOUS ELECTION VOTER CARDS - in support of the proposed democratic reform elections Bill. ISH ===================== By TIM NAUMETZ | HILL TIMES Published: Tuesday, 03/25/2014 6:05 pm EDT Tory MP Hawn recalls voter card shenanigans in 2006, but Elections Canada says cards not used in 2006 election PARLIAMENT HILL—A second Conservative MP has come forward in Parliament with allegations of suspected wrongdoing over voter ID in a past election, in this case eight years ago, as prominent electoral experts warned MPs that a government plan to eliminate vouching for electors with insufficient ID would be unconstitutional. But as with the first Conservative allegation of alleged electoral violations, when Conservative MP Brad Butt (Mississauga-Streetsville, Ont.) had to later retract his statement in the Commons as being hearsay rather than a first-hand account of trickery at the polls, the new allegations, from Alberta MP Laurie Hawn (Edmonton Centre, Alta.), have also come under scrutiny. Mr. Hawn told the Commons on Monday, the day prior to the expert testimony on the government’s controversial election legislation, Bill C-23, that during the 2006 federal election period he was “called personally and offered hundreds of voter cards that had been left in apartment buildings and so on.” “Like an idiot, I said, ‘No, we dont do that sort of thing,’ ” he said. “I should have said, ‘Yes, come on down,’ and had the police waiting,” Mr. Hawn said during debate over the legislation, which also proposes to end the use of voter information cards as acceptable proof of residence. Along with the elimination of vouching, where neighbours or relatives of voters in the same polling division can vouch for electors without ID, who then must swear an oath they are who they claim to be and are eligible to cast ballots in that district, a prohibition of the voter information card as acceptable ID for proof of address, is at the root of one of the biggest controversies involving the constitutional right of Canadian citizens to vote. Mr. Butt claimed in the House of Commons two days after the government tabled the legislation on Feb. 4 that he had witnessed campaign workers in a past election period scooping up voter information cards in an apartment lobby and handing them over to “other people, who will then be vouched for at a voting booth and vote illegally.” Mr. Butt retracted the statement two weeks later, reportedly after a complaint had been filed to Elections Canada. The NDP later accused him of breaching MP privileges with his original comment. After attending the Procedure and House Affairs Committee session on Tuesday as an observer MP, not taking part as a member of the committee, Mr. Hawn did not take questions about his statement, declining an interview with The Hill Times and avoiding journalists prior to and after the Commons Question Period. In the meantime, responding to questions after Mr. Hawn’s comments were mentioned by Conservative MP Scott Reid (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, Ont.) in the committee proceedings, Elections Canada told The Hill Times the voter information card was not accepted as voter ID in the 2006 election, when it was used solely as mail-out information to voters about their poll locations and was not required at the polls even as a way to help polling officials direct voters to their polling station ballot box. Mr. Hawn, approached later during a chance meeting outside a committee room, declined to elaborate about his concern, or take questions about the timing of his statement, so long after the election took place. “Come to committee, I’ve got that and a whole lot more,” he said. Informed that the voter information cards were not used as ID in 2006, Mr. Hawn replied: “There’s rules, and how it was used are two different things.” Meanwhile, Mr. Kingsley, along with B.C. Chief Electoral Officer David Brock and the Chief Electoral Officer for the Northwest Territories, Keith Archer, warned that the elimination of vouching would prevent otherwise qualified electors from casting ballots and exercising their right to vote under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Former B.C. chief electoral officer Harry Neufeld, who supervised an audit of the 2011 election and found widespread irregularities and errors in the way vouching was administered at the polls, nonetheless has countered government concerns over potential fraud by noting the audit found no evidence of fraud. Mr. Neufeld predicted “well more than 120,000” voters will be denied the right to cast ballots if vouching is eliminated, along with any ability to use the Elections Canada voter information card as proof of address. “This will directly affect the constitutional right to vote of a significant number of Canadians without justification,” Mr. Kingsley said. Mr. Kingsley pointed out that Elections Canada maintains strict measures for vouching from electors who have already met voter ID and address qualifications for the same polling division, and that anyone who vouches at the polls can only vouch for one other elector. “In practice, in many cases, vouching is employed in circumstances where there is no risk,” Mr. Kingsley said. “In the majority of cases, vouchers are related to the person for whom they are vouching, and the person being vouched for may already be on the list of electors. Moreover, vouching is often used where proof of ID is provided and proof of address is lacking.” “The errors identified with the vouching process, in this committee, have been administrative in nature owing to failings of poll officials, rather than being indicative of fraudulent voting,” he said. “There is a fundamental inequity when a federal statute requires documentary proof of identity and address, before one can exercise a constitutional right, and no federal agency provides such proof in one readily available form.” Elections Canada launched an investigation into allegations of voting irregularities in the Edmonton-Centre electoral district in 2006, but over allegations that non-residential addresses had appeared on voter lists, allowing electors who lived in other ridings to cast ballots in Edmonton-Centre. A 2007 report from the investigation said it identified 93 electors on a list of electors at what appeared to be non-residential or business addresses. One-third had voted properly because they lived at the address or nearby, another 20 had voted in the correct electoral district but at the wrong polling station, and 21 were from outside Edmonton Centre but had voted there. The report said the addresses of those 21 voters had been updated on the National Register of Electors from information they had given to Revenue Canada and the Alberta motor vehicle registry, and none had “willfully or knowingly registered to vote in the wrong electoral district, and none were found to have voted twice.” There was no evidence of any link among the electors or evidence that they had “acted in an organized manner,” the report said, and the commissioner of Elections Canada concluded that concerns a large number of voters cast ballots in the wrong electoral district with the intention of affecting the outcome of the election were unfounded. tnaumetz@hilltimes The Hill Times
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:58:18 +0000
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