So the Supreme Court Ruled that a publication ban was acceptable in order to ensure west coast voters were not influenced by the east coast results before the western polls close.
This whole situation is ridiculous. We all know that with the internet, American bloggers like Captain’s Quarters kept us all in the loop on Gomery despite a publication ban.
How does the Supreme Court suggest we monitor for those breaking the law? In a day and age of instant information, live, up front, and in your face, there is no way they can lock up every blogger that posts results. Heck, there are people who live blog this kind of stuff on the minute.
This problem does not affect most smaller nations in Europe or Africa because they only have one time zone. But Canada has four. So what are we to do?
My suggestion? Open up the BC polls at 6 am, the Mountain time zone polls at 7am, the Central time zone polls at 8am, the Eastern time zone polls at 9am and the Newfoundland time zone polls at 9:30am. Run them for 12 or 13 hours each and close them all up at the same time. either 9:30pm or 10:30pm.
If society can’t adhere to the rules, then simply adjust the rules so that it doesn’t matter.
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I don’t think the polls have to close at the same time in order to open all the ballot boxes nationally at the same time.
That is, DROs down east can sit on their boxes for a few hours while waiting for polls to close out west.
The suggestion of closing all polls at the same time creates an uneven situation, whereby voters in some regions are presented more “regular daytime” opportunities to vote than are other voters.
Or we can realize that exit polls and other informal sources of information are (probably?) not subject to the blackout, and give almost as much information as the official ballot box results as they pour in.
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I believe that the bigger picture is being overlooked here. Right now, Ontario and Quebec hold the majority of seats because of their population. With the recent population explosion in AB and BC, those two provinces cobine for a total of 7.1 million people and climbing. QC has roughly 500,000 more people than BC and AB yet they have 75 seats in Parliament. AB and BC combined have 64. They should have at least 71 according to the population percentage breakdown model currently in use by elections Canada. Redraw the political map, give AB and BC more seats and there you have it. The western block may or may not be a king maker, and perhaps we can get rid of this little blackout issue on election night.
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I don’t really see what the problem is. All they have to do is delay the count for a specified amount of time. Delay it an hour and by the time it is announced the two or three hour difference would have been made up. Instead of getting results at 6 they would be announced at nine in halifax and 6 in vancouver.
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Good thinking. I agree with letting the polls run during the same hours in each time zone, ie, 8 – 6 local or whatever seems fair and then waiting until all polls have closed to start the count.
That way they can move from West to East or East to West, it would actually give the media more flexibility too.
btw I thought Quebec had more than 7.5 million people. If that’s all they have now, their population has really tanked.
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According to wikipedia, the population of Quebec is 7,651,531 (2006 census) and 75 MPs.
British Columbia has 4,113,487 and 36 MPs. Alberta has 3,290,350 and 28 MPs for a total of 7,403,837 and 64 MPs.
Taxation without representation per population.
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I like the idea of waiting for all the polls to close before starting the count. This would mean those in Eastern Canada have to wait with their boxes a couple of extra hours but that isn’t too high a price for equalizing the timing.
As for the populations, that’s just plain garbage. If Quebec gets one MP per 100,000 people, every province should get about the same.
By Mac’s numbers that means BC should get 5 more MPs and Alberta should get 5 more MPs too.
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I agree with mac and odie441 about the imbalance in representation vis ontario/quebec and alberta/bc.
But the only way to deal with the problem is LESS mps for the east.
You would have to have been living under a rock, or just arrived from a parallel universe to not observe the extreme damage done to this country by big government.
So my suggestion is smaller government, or at least the same number of seats, along with seat redistribution.
More on topic with Mulder’s post. If what voters in the east are doing determine what voters in the west decide, we should probably institute some sort of test for brain activity and intelligence to stop such easily swayed people from voting…at all.
Cheers!
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The distribution of seats is a mess in large part because of the number of seats allocated in the Senate, and the rule that says that a province must not have fewer seats in the House than in the Senate (and a newer rule that says that the number of seats won’t go down from 1976).
As a result, only ON, AB, and BC have anything close to the quotient allocation; all other provinces are granted extra seats in the HoC.
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/fedrep/federal_e/repform_e.htm
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The number of MPs has only a marginal effect on the size of government since the vast majority of civil servants are not politicians. There are 308 MPs but Service Canada (only one branch of the civil service) has over 20,000 employees. I’m all for smaller government but reducing the number of MPs would likely grow the government, not reduce it, as MPs depend on civil servants to accomplish many of their tasks.
Instead, we need an ideological shift in Ottawa, away from the path toward a moribund nanny state and the Trudeau-topian nightmare to a smaller, responsive and transparent government. Do you think the Grits, Dippers, Bloc or Greenies will provide this change?
I wonder what kind of fools would allow the results of other ridings to influence their decision to vote? A ridiculous law.
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I feel that only the smallest percentage would strategically vote. I also think that they would be punished over the internet and blogs for doing so.