Voters List Valid?

Saturday, June 11, 2005 04:15 AM

Don MacKinnon reads the letter he received from Elections B.C. which says he isn't allowed to vote if he fails to provide proof of age

Don MacKinnon is 85 years old and wonders why he was allowed to vote in the last provincial election.

When the voter's list was updated, the 45 year resident of Prince Geore was sent a form which he dutifully filled out and returned. He forgot however, to write in his date of birth. He was then sent another letter telling him that failure to provide his birth date meant he would be ommitted from the voter's list.

He didn't want to give his birthdate, so he contacted Shirley Bond and Premier Campbell. Both informed him that if he failed to provide a birthdate, he was off the voters list.

Just to test the waters, he showed up at a polling booth on May 17th to see if he would be allowed to vote. Sure enough enough, his name was still on the list.

MacKinnon is happy he was allowed to vote but wonders aloud if he wasn't supposed to be on the list, just how many other ineligible voters were allowed to cast ballots?

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Posted on Saturday, June 11, 2005 04:15 AM in News by Elaine Macdonald

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Comments

Posted by: Canar on June 11 2005 1:27 PM

So, according to a letter and/or officials, he's not allowed to vote, but when he showed up, he was able to.

This is a problem because?

There is no proof of voter list inaccuracy short of a weak assertion being made by the author of this article. The people who wanted to vote were allowed to.

Now, if someone was to find proof of someone who shouldn't be on the voter list successfully voting, that might be newsworthy.

Posted by: Chadermando on June 11 2005 5:48 PM

This is newsworthy because if you are not supposed to be on the voters list, and yet you are, then it creates variance that will facilitate vote counting fraud.

If you are not on the voters list, and yet are elegable to vote and register at the voting both, than this however is not a problem.

It is the great flaw of our democracy that we do not have a 100% varifiable vote counting process. The world still waits for its first truely varifiable secret ballot democracy. IMO we should be the ones leading the way.

If we look at the US presidential election, Ukraine, Georgia, to Ethiopia and all the way back here to Prince George we do not have varifiable elections, and smarter people than us are finally starting to take stock of this huge problem for our future self determination.

A recent poll conducted by CNN found that 78% of respondants felt that multinational corporations now control our media and political system and not the citizens of the country.

A varifiable ballot is our first line of defence.

Posted by: Canar on June 12 2005 11:09 PM

<blockquote>This is newsworthy because if you are not supposed to be on the voters list, and yet you are, then it creates variance that will facilitate vote counting fraud.

If you are not on the voters list, and yet are elegable to vote and register at the voting both, than this however is not a problem.</blockquote>

Mr. MacKinnon falls into the latter category, does he not? Then, by your own words, this "is not a problem."

Age verification is only really important for young voters, and it appears that common sense has prevailed here. Mr. MacKinnon is most definitely not underage.

I find it very silly that someone's attempting to sensationalize the system showing common sense here. This is a sign that the system works the way it should; when common sense is allowed to work, things generally turn out better than when business is conducted in its usual insanely legalistic manner.

Posted by: flowerchild on June 13 2005 12:28 PM

The story clearly says his name was ON the list, although it was not supposed to be...there in lies the problem.