Have you ever seen election fraud in Canada? 

 

I have never seen it, but I have heard of it. 

 

One of my family stories involved my grandfather, a provincial election, and the province of Quebec. 

 

Many years ago, my grandparents were one of six English families who lived in the Quebec village of St. Eustache, outside of Montreal. 

 

Back in those days, Quebec was controlled by the Union Nationale government and the Roman Catholic Church. The church handled education and social welfare and the government looked after the rest. 

 

The local parish priest mixed politics and theology from the pulpit. He told people how to vote. 

 

This did not sit well with the community. The community also knew that electoral fraud was being perpetrated, and so several prominent local families approached my grandfather to serve as a returning officer in the next election. Their thinking was that an Anglophone was less susceptible to influence and corruption by both the government and the church. 

 

Knowing my grandfather, who worked in the advertising industry in Montreal and who was a senior lay leader in the small, local United Church, I could see their logic. I suspect any attempt at electoral corruption would be been met with a stern glare and a few sharp words from my grandfather, based around the phrase “get lost”.  

Apparently the electoral scam involved double enumeration. 

 

Back in those days, voter's lists were compiled by house to house calling by two enumerators. However, there was a large summer community on the back river at St. Eustache, whose names had found their way onto the voters list. 

 

My grandfather was told the fraud strategy was that the people in the summer community would vote in Montreal, jump on the evening commuter train and arrive at the poll, just as it closed, to vote a second time and, presumably, stuff the ballot box.

 

On election day it was arranged that the local stationmaster would call the polling station when the commuter train from Montreal arrived with the voters. On receiving the call, my grandfather would close the poll and have a police officer bar the door. 

 

It all played out exactly as planned. The train arrived, the stationmaster made his call, my grandfather closed the polling station and with some help from the constable on the door, departed through a back window, carrying the ballot box. He took it to the local returning office, where the ballots were properly counted under careful, impartial scrutiny. 

 

The double voters were left at the closed door, shouting and pounding to be let in. 

Our government seems to think electoral corruption and voter fraud is still an issue today and has brought forward the Fair Elections Act. 

 

There are many, including elections experts, who disagree with the government’s premise that there is a high risk of electoral fraud in Canada. In fact, many think the proposed legislation will take the right to vote away from many people, because of too strict standards for qualifying as a voter. 

 

I have heard it said that Canada’s simple paper ballot system of voting with electoral lists managed by an independent, non-partisan electoral office is considered to be among the fairest and least corrupt in the world.

 

Perhaps the best advice is that attributed to T. Bert Lance, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget in Jimmy Carter's 1977 administration. He was quoted in the newsletter of the US Chamber of Commerce in May 1977, saying, "That's the trouble with government: Fixing things that aren't broken and not fixing things that are broken."

 

I think my grandfather would agree.  

 

Rev. David Shearman is the minister of Central Westside United Church, Owen Sound and the host of Faithworks on Rogers TV - Grey County, Cable 53.