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When talking about The Fair Elections Act, the Chief Electoral Officer said, “My reading of the act is that I can no longer speak about democracy in this country.” Maybe that’s a stretch. Canada’s still a democracy, but it’s just a leaner, lower calorie democracy, light on enfranchisement and with a sour, cynical aftertaste.

Voters all get voter information cards in the mail before an election. In the last election 400,000 people used them as their proof of  address. But the Fair Elections Act banned this practice. Coincidentally, many people who don’t have an ID with their address on it are students, people living on a reserve, and the homeless. In other words, people who use “voting Conservative” as a euphemism for food poisoning.   

To justify the bill, the Conservatives cited a report by an independent expert that showed evidence of fraud. But that expert recommended that the use of voter information cards as ID be increased, and he said cases of people voting multiple times are extremely rare, and the people who do it usually have dementia. This is a witch-hunt without a witch. And if there is a witch she probably has dementia so you can just gently redirect her into a safe and comfortable activity. Maybe a Harry Potter jigsaw puzzle.

Tens of thousands of people may show up to vote on October 19th and be told they can’t. In response, student and social justice organizations are seeking an injunction, asking the court to allow voter information cards as a valid form of ID. And this can’t be good for the Conservatives, because if the Fair Elections Act is given a fair hearing, it might be exposed as just an act.

This video originallly appeared in The Toronto Star. 

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Scott Vrooman

Scott has written and performed comedy for TV (Conan, Picnicface, This Hour Has 22 Minutes), radio (This is That), and the web (Vice, Funny or Die, College Humor, The Toronto Star, The Huffington Post,...