LETTER

Making it easier to rig an election?

 

Since 1847 until Marc Bureau, every election was marked with the opening of an Election Office at the Town Hall where anyone can go to find out information about it. This year, however, the election is being handled very differently...

When I asked for the Election Office at the old Aylmer Town Hall this afternoon, I was told that new rules and procedures are now being applied to this election:

1. There is no Election Office at all.

2. Candidates will be allowed to keep their candidacy secret until polling day... so there is nothing to stop, say, Celine Dion from suddenly appearing on the Ward 3 ballot paper on election day and winning by sheer force of brand name without any public scrutiny beforehand over what she actually stands for.

3. Nominators of every candidate will now be kept strictly secret, so there is no public scrutiny over whether someone has been nominated by a team of hotshot, international banking financiers, Vladimir Putin and the boys from the Kremlin or by a bunch of stiffs who have been pushing up the daisies in the local cemetery for the last 20 years.

4. All contact details for candidates will be kept strictly secret to prevent any ordinary people asking any awkward questions.

5. All enquiries are restricted to only Canadian citizens... so tough luck on any political refugees or landed immigrants trying to find out who might represent them.

... And all for an election run by a man appointed by the Mayor himself.

Moving the election behind closed doors is creepy and suspicious.

Forgive me, I thought we all lived in Canada, not the Congo.

Robert L Thompsett
Aylmer

(NOTE: The Directeur General des Elections Quebecois (DGEQ) sets the standards and parameters of all municipal (and provincial) elections in our province. Whether or not the mayor can intervene is debatable, but less important than Mr Thompsett’s question: how democratic are these changes?)