Thursday, March 15, 2007

Gag-law on Election Results

So the Supreme Court is ruling on whether it should be illegal to publish election results in Canada before the polls have closed across the country.

The details are here at the CBC.

For my part, I would like to know what the impact is on voters who will hear the results from Ontario and eastwards before they have made their final decision.

Does it discourage significant numbers of people?

Does it make some people irrationally decide to support the winning team (thus creating a majority government where ordinarily there would have been a minority)?

With modern technology, the only sure way to prevent broadcasting of the results would be to force all polling stations to keep a lock on their individual results until the polls closed on Vancouver Island.

This would give polling monitors and Elections Canada officials a very long working day.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

"For my part, I would like to know what the impact is on voters who will hear the results from Ontario and eastwards before they have made their final decision."

Very good post.

It may have a band wagon effect or it may cause people to stop a majority from happening.

This does make me feel however like my vote really does not count, that everything is decided before my Manitoba vote.

I know from talking with friends that this does cause alot of anger.

I don't know how they are really going to stop people from finding out the results, with modern communications like "the google", and blogs.

When Harper was elected, I knew I had a voice, for once.