Ballot Box Protest on Voting Day

Canadians go to the polls on Tuesday. The Canadian election has been overshadowed by the huge political wrangling going on in the United States. I think Americans are about as aware of OUR immanent election, as they are of our Thanksgiving Day (not anytime near the American Thanksgiving Day, but on Monday, October 13th, one day before our election) However, we in the True North, are heavily and painfully kept in the loop of US political buzz. Canucks were split last week when faced with the dilemma of watching  Palin and McCain square off, or tuning in to the televised Canadian leaders debate. American politics definitely has more drama, glitz and pzazz.  The US process also goes on and on,  like a grim death march, unlike the mercifully quick shenanigans in the North. Frankly, I don’t know how Americans survive two years or more of primaries etc. (or sanction the obscene amount of money spent to hold them).  I’ve listened to the  Canadian political ads for less than two MONTHS and I am fed up. Not that it matters in the least, because on voting day, I will not have the opportunity to exercise my democratic right to vote in the same way that other Canadians will cast their ballots at the polls in that,  A BALLOT  IS INTENDED TO BE CAST:  SECRETLY, INDEPENDANTLY AND TO BE VERIFIABLE. There will be no option for electronic voting in Canada.  There is no telephone voting either. Voting machines? No such thing here. Not even a Braille ballot for the handful of blind people who can read Braille.  No, the best accessibility option that Elections Canada will offer me on Tuesday is their  infamous “Template”. They  proudly whip out this ridiculous piece of plastic with holes in it, at every election, whenever a blind person enters a polling station. For some reason, it has been accepted by blind people for years.   Here’s how it works. The ballot is inserted into the plastic template. There are holes that line up with each candidate’s name on the ballot.  A friend, or DRO (Deputy Returning Officer) reads off the order of candidates as they appear on the ballot. The blind person is then left behind the screen (Ooo, this must be our right to secrecy being observed) to mark an X in one of the holes (Ooo, this must be our Independence being respected), and hope that they have remembered which name is supposed to be in which  hole, or that the ‘reader’ got the sequence right in the first place! You can forget any delusions you may have  that you can verify your own ballot if you are blind.  At this point, the friend or polling clerk returns to help fold the ballot (no one can figure out how to accomplish that without reading the how-to instructions on the ballot) and takes the blind person to the ballot box, where a minor fanfare is made of allowing the blind person to deposit the ballot  into the ballot box all by him or herself. Elections officials will go to bed on Tuesday night, feeling all warm and fuzzy that all Canadians have participated equitably in the democratic process. Hmm. I heard a story on the news today which made me smile. It seems that a man in Pictou county was arrested on voting day at the past two federal elections. The first time, he stole a ballot box, took it outside and drove his truck over it. The second time, he stole another box and hurled it into a lagoon. He calls himself the “ballot box bandit” and is allegedly protesting  inequitable compensation payments for industrial waste cleanups…I’m not going to be stealing any ballot boxes, but I will make my point on election day.  How? I’m not sure yet, but at the very least, I will vote secretly, independently and it won’t matter if I can verify my ballot or not, because I am going to SPOIL it by whatever means I choose. I will not do this with a light heart, because I DO care who is elected (and certainly, that Stephen Harper does NOT win a majority government)  but  no one is reading my ballot to me! The eroneous expectation that Elections Canada holds, that they will have fulfilled their obligation of providing  me and other blind Canadians with a democratic and accessible vote by offering a useless template, is NOT going to cut it with me this time.