(The following article is from the November 16-30, 2007 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St. Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.

By Kimball Cariou

While the parties in Parliament engage in macho chest-thumping over the non-existent "threat" of voting by veiled Muslim women, the genuine attack on access to the ballot is getting more intense.

     The Canada Elections Act does allow many voters the right not to reveal their faces - those who cast their ballots by mail. The real scandal is that if a federal election had been held this  fall, as many as one million potential voters would have been denied ballots. That figure should set off alarm bells, but the mass media and most MPs other than some New Democrats have largely ignored this scandal.

     In recent years, homeless people and other poor Canadians have faced increasing electoral barriers. Those difficulties were compounded by Bill C-31, amendments to the Elections Act passed last spring.

     A coalition of citizens groups and lawyers in British Columbia warns that C-31 deprives many Canadians of the right to vote. The group is now preparing a legal challenge, arguing that the amendments violate the Charter of Rights. Section 3 of the Charter says that every citizen has the right to vote in a federal or provincial election, and Section 15 guarantees equal protection and benefit of the law. By interfering with the right to vote, the amendments erode hard-won democratic rights and single out particular groups.

     The parts of C-31 that cause the most concern are the new, mandatory voter identification rules. Even those who are on the official list of electors and have a voter card will not be permitted to vote unless they can produce one piece of government-issued ID with photograph and current residential address, or two pieces of ID from a list to be issued by Elections Canada.

     In British Columbia, for example, except for a drivers' license or B.C. ID (which costs $35 and can take six weeks to obtain), hardly any other forms of government-issued ID include a personal photo and address, not even a passport.

     Those who do not have the mandatory ID can only receive a ballot by swearing an oath and producing another voter to vouch for them. The other voter must have the required ID, must live in the same polling district, and can only vouch for one person.

     When a committee of the House of Commons was preparing these changes, Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley testified that there is no evidence of voter fraud to require fixing. And when representatives of the access coalition appeared before the Committee, they were told that the purpose of the changes was "to address a political problem."

     As the coalition points out, "It is interesting to note that in the recent US mid-term elections, many Republican-dominated states adopted exactly these kinds of voter ID rules in an attempt to make it harder for groups who tend to lean toward the Democrats to vote. These laws were struck down by the courts in several states."

     People who are less likely to own driver's licenses will be widely affected, including many seniors, people with restricted physical mobility or other disabilities, poor people, and Indigenous people (who have the highest poverty rate in Canada).

In poor urban communities, like Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, many people have difficulty obtaining and keeping photo ID. In past elections, squads of lawyers helped hundreds of people register to vote by swearing affidavits to identify them. The new rules would eliminate this solution.

     New Canadians may face added difficulties in meeting the requirements, including language barriers, more recent addresses, and less access to eligible registered voters who can vouch for them. People who have fled or are living in abusive situations may not have access to their ID documents. Transgendered people may face difficulties at polling stations if their ID does not seem to correspond with their perceived gender or current appearance.

     People who are more likely to move around - tenants, students, those living in poverty - often do not own ID with their current address, and are less likely to know someone in their immediate neighbourhood who is eligible to vouch for them.

     The rules will even affect some who do own the required ID. Many people will arrive at the polls with only their voter cards, only to be told to bring more ID. If it is late in the day, or if they have mobility or transportation problems, many will not be able to comply.

     Even more potential victims live in rural Canada. The requirement to show photo ID including "residential address" will affect over a million electors who live outside cities and towns, carrying ID that may contain only a box number, rural route, or range road number. This is 4.4% of all eligible voters. In 3,560 polls, more than 30% of electors do not have a residential address - enough to dramatically affect the outcome of an election.

     In Saskatchewan, 189,000 voters, or 27.33% of all electors, do not have a residential address. In Manitoba 149,547 voters (18%) have no such address and could be denied a ballot as a result. The figure is 320,238 voters (13.5%) in Alberta; 91,000 (23.21%) in Newfoundland, 148,295 in Ontario, and 53,811 in Quebec. In the north, where Aboriginal voters are the majority, the figures are even worse: 13,092 voters (80.75%) in Nunavut; 7,632 (27.76%) in NWT; and 3,702 (16.39%) in Yukon.

     A Tory proposal to "fix" this problem by allowing ID "consistent with" the information on the electors' list is now before a parliamentary committee. NDP members on the committee argue that the "fix" is inadequate; they propose that voters should be allowed to simply swear an oath and receive their ballot. Unless Parliament acts soon, the next election may see polling officials refuse to provide ballots to huge numbers of Canadians.

     "This situation is outrageous," says Liz Rowley, who attended a recent meeting of Elections Canada's Advisory Committee of Political Parties on behalf of the Communist Party of Canada.

     Rowley says the real issue is not "voter fraud," but the potential for a much broader form of "election fraud." She notes that voter turnout in the Oct. 10th Ontario election was just 53%, an 80 year record low. Voter ID was required for the first time in Ontario, and many people were illegally turned away at the polls by demands for photo ID, which is not required at the provincial level.

     Making the voting process ever more complicated, she warns, has the effect of disfranchising large numbers of Canadians, which will fraudulently affect the outcome of elections.

     "The Tories seem determined to obstruct democracy and prevent huge numbers of people from exercising their fundamental right to vote," says Rowley. "The corporate media refuses to cover the views and candidates of the smaller parties, Parliament has set an arbitrary 2% barrier against funding of these parties, and there are attempts to restrict participation in all-candidate forums. Putting it all together, we can see that the Big Business parties are trying to transform the universal franchise into a two-tier operation, where some people have more rights and opportunities to vote than others. We will continue to fight these undemocratic restrictions every step of the way, in the courts and in the arena of public opinion."