"Caging" the Vote in Canada

Due to a weak, essentially unilingual Liberal party leader, Stephane Dion, and a badly timed, poorly communicated "Green Shift" platform, the Conservative Party of Canada, led by Stephen Harper just won a minority government with significantly more seats than before. In fact they are now blathering and ulalating about having a "mandate" to implement their extremist agenda.

At least that is the mainstream view. What is not being discussed is the effect that new regulations had on Canadian would be voters, which required them to provide photo-identification at polling booths. This new regulation was NOT communicated to the public. The first I heard of it was on the day of the election! Even a passport was not sufficient in itself to prove identity! It would have been a simple matter to include this new information on the voting registration card that is sent to all voters, but it was not. Stupidity? Indifference? Incompetence? Not likely.

I have no idea how many Canadians were disenfranchised as a result of that policy, but CBC ran a story on election day where they talked to a number of people who were unable to vote since they were not able to produce their "papers". One disenfranchised voter is too many.

The number one piece of photo ID used in Canada is the drivers licence. So who is least like to have a drivers licence? Answer, poor people, minorities, urban people, and of course, immigrants. Who is least likely to vote for a heartless, love the rich and big business, government? Poor people, minorities, urbanites, and immigrants.

Good job Stephen! You should send those Republican campaign advisers a big bonus! Oh, what's that? You did? Never mind.