Letter to the Editor
Dear Meaford Independent Editor,
MP Miller is attempting to defend an indefensible piece of electoral legislation.
In the last election, 0ver 120,000 people used the vouching process.
Apparently, 40-50,000 of them experienced administrative staff errors that did not track who vouched and who voted, however, all of them did explain their case and convince official electoral officers that they did meet residency and voting requirements! This is not a trivial effort, the officials are most careful to prevent fraud.
In fact Larry and the Conservatives have not offered even one instance of voting fraud to back up their effort to disenfranchise 120,000 voters.
It seems that the Conservatives are less interested in preventing fraud from robo-calling, election spending, and political campaign donation fraud than they are in voter suppression. In fact they want to increase election donation limits when they should be reduced. We don’t need elections bought by those wealthy enough to buy influence.
I agree with Mr. Manning: the chief electoral officer needs more power, not less, to keep the real fraud issues under control.
The majority of Canadians clearly see that the undocumented rationale for voter suppression is simply pandering to the Conservative base at the expense of elderly, students, and new citizens who frequently do not vote for old-school conservatives.
The main electoral problems are a lack of voter participation: we don’t need to pass laws to reduce participation.
Dave MacDougall, Meaford
