An American U of T student seeking to expose flaws in Canada’s electoral registration system was astonished when he was able to register and vote last week.
Peter Cunningham, 21, a third-year student from Michigan, said that he presented his T-Card, displaying his name and signature, and a hydro bill, displaying his Canadian address, to elections officials at his Trinity-Spadina polling station, and was permitted to vote. Cunningham, who is in Canada on a student visa, was not asked to show proof of Canadian citizenship, he said.
Cunningham learned of the perceived flaw in the voting system while training to be a campaign volunteer some days before election day. An aspiring journalist, Cunningham [a contributor to a number of campus newspapers, including The Varsity] was motivated to expose what he saw as a flaw in the elections system, but also to create a good story.
“It’s hard in journalism to get noticed,” he said. “I wanted to write a good story and I wanted to change a law. I killed two birds with one stone.”
Cunningham said he spoiled his vote by writing outside of the designated area on the ballot.
He also said he was unaware at the time that electoral fraud can carry a penalty of up to $5,000 and up to five years in prison. But the punitive measures are irrelevant, he said. Had he not gone public with his actions-his story ran in the Toronto Star and he appeared on Canada AM-his vote would have gone unnoticed, he said.
Cunningham fears that if such an action were to become widespread, election results, particularly those in close races, could be significantly altered.
Sean Boileau, an inquiries officer for Elections Canada, confirmed that the Canada Elections Act does not require electors to show proof of age or citizenship when registering to vote. The process is based on the honour system, he said. “It’s more about encouraging people to vote and less about stopping them…. It’s about trying to find the balance,” he said.
Elections Canada’s mandate is simply to collect and count votes; any change in that mandate must come from Parliament, said Boileau. The Chief Returning Officer makes recommendations on modifications to the voting system in a presentation held usually some months after the election. Elections Canada would not comment as to whether the Chief Returning Officer would make recommendations based on Cunningham’s actions.
Officials from Elections Canada have not contacted Cunningham.
For Cunningham, the registration process was not restrictive enough; but some Canadian U of T students found just the opposite. A number of students who live in residence were turned away at the polls because they were unable to provide sufficient proof of address.
In the days leading up to Jan. 23, Elections Canada and the deans of a number of residences had worked to establish lists of the names of students in residence. These lists, passable as certification of residence in the Trinity-Spadina riding, were given to election officials.
But on Election Day, the Returning Officer for the Trinity-Spadina riding prohibited elections officials from prompting voters to instruct the officials to look on the dean’s list for their names.
As a result, students who were unaware of the dean’s lists were turned away.
