But What If She Votes By Mail?

Not many details on the new Tory anti-veiled-woman legislation, which

require[s] all voters — including veiled Muslim women — to reveal their faces before being allowed to cast ballots in federal elections.

but whether it is an honest attempt to "fix" Canada's electoral system or an excuse to hassle Muslims will depend on two things:

1) Does it require people voting by mail to visually confirm their identity? If not, the whole purpose of the legislation is defeated: how will we know that they aren't hiding their faces when they drop their ballot in the post?

2) Will the requirement to unveil be accompanied by the requirement that all voters produce photo ID? If not, then the unveiling will not serve as a means to identify the voter, but merely as a form of ritual humiliation (of Muslim women).

And I don't see how any society is going to secure the patriotism of their minority groups by picking on their womenfolk. It seems counterproductive to me.

Update: the Gov. news release is here. So far it seems to say nothing about mail-in voting and providing photo ID when casting a ballot in person. In other words, the legislation will make people remove their veils even where this at does nothing to help establish their identity.

They Huffed And They Puffed

...but Canada's chief electoral officer, Marc Mayrand, stood firm. Our electoral laws will not get rewritten on the fly by the Elections Canada bureaucracy so that purely hypothetical burqa-wearing Muslim women can be hassled during next week's Quebec by-elections.

Any bets on where this ends? I say it peters out after some additional mumbling and grumbling, because any rewrite of the Elections Act that is not obviously racist will have to figure out how to let (for example) Canadian Snowbirds vote by mail while meeting some kind of photo ID requirement.

In any case, RT is still on this, and LK has also picked up the gauntlet. I will probably have nothing more to say today, as I am in meetings all morning and all afternoon.

PS. The comments on the CTV story linked above are really quite encouraging. The vast majority of posters seem to have figured out that its the government and opposition parties who screwed-up in this case. And this realization seems to extend across the political spectrum.

Tory Election Act Changes: Still Oversold

From an Natty Post article on the Torys healthy looking poll numbers; Darrell Bricker, president of Ipsos-Reid, comments:

"'They have made such a strong case about their desire not to have an election that to go back now and try to instigate one makes them look a bit hypocritical. Plus, they also have a bill in the Senate right now [calling] for fixed election dates.'"

In fact, some have suggested that the Libs save their own skins by getting this bill out of the Senate before Harper can call his Spring election. Unfortunately, that probably won't work. The proposed Election Act changes are very much less than they appear. I wrote back in June, riffing on a piece done by Cerberus, that:

1) The revised Act will not let a government that is down in the polls extend its term into a fifth year, a la Mulroney's gang and Bob Rae's hapless Ontario Dippers.

2) The revised act will continue to allow a government up in the polls to pull the plug on a parliamentary session and call a snap election, a la Chretien in 2000.

Now, a few people argued back then that even if this was true, Harper would be "morally obliged" to hold off on an election call until the fixed date came up. I answered this at greater length back then, but the short response is: morally smorally! The changes still allow the government drop the writ anytime before the fixed date that they think is advantageous.