[kwlug-disc] Asking questions of candidates during the election.

[Chris Frey]

On Thu, Mar 31, 2011 at 04:40:51PM -0400, L.D. Paniak wrote:
> Correct.  Write-ins are ballot spoiling:
> 
> http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=loi/jud&document=jud_p3&lang=e
> 
> 
> And ballot spoiling is illegal:
> 
> http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SpecialEvent7/20060121/eating_ballot_060122/
> 
> 
> It seems there is no mechanism for registering a protest vote at the
> federal level:
> 
> http://www.elections.ca/res/pub/ecdocs/EC10470_e.pdf
> 
> See Section 10.3.9.


But if you don't write anything on it, you're not spoiling the ballot,
to my knowledge, since you're not destroying or defacing it.

It will just be counted in the "rejected" column of the results,
as far as I understand section 13.1.5.

So you can protest by depositing an empty ballot, but all that says
is "none of the above" and I don't hear tallies of rejected ballots
very often.

I do hear complaints about voter turnout though, so if you truly want
to protest like that, you can always stay home.

- Chris