My American and international readers might not know this, but by posting Canadian election results before the polls closed nationwide, I broke Canadian election law.
Since 1938, a ban has been in place that forbids reporting election results in Canada before all the polls have closed. Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act states:
No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district.
The punishment for breaking this law is a fine no greater than $25,000.
This law was challenged in the 2000 election when Paul Bryan, a software engineer living in British Columbia, published results on his website. After bouncing upwards in the court system (convicted in B.C. Provincial Court, overturned in B.C. Supreme Court, ban upheld by B.C. Court of Appeal), the Supreme Court of Canada upheld the blackout. Bryan was fined $1000.
I don’t live in Canada, so I don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the law. I don’t agree with the law, either. Voters should be given the opportunity to vote with any information available to them. If this means Western Canadians get to know the results from Atlantic Canada and possibly change their votes because of this new information, so be it. Elections Canada has every ability to stop this from happening by having the polls close across the country at the same time (tough to do as Canada spans five time zones), not release the results to the media until all the polls are closed, push for expanded early voting or mail-in votes, or close polling stations at staggered times across the country but only start counting at the same time.
A ban on disseminating information in the age of world-wide instant communication is infeasible, as my blog (and others, and other sources like Twitter) demonstrate. It’s a law for the radio age, not for the Internet age, and ought to be stricken from the Canada Elections Act.
Further reading:
In the hour it took me to get home, the obvious happened: CBC projected a Conservative minority government. It looks like the Conservatives gained 15 seats (127 to 142), the Liberals lost 18 seats (95 to 77), the BQ gained one seat (48 to 49), and the NDP gained 7 seats (30 to 37). Two independents were elected, both in Québec one in Québec and one in Nova Scotia. The big winners are clearly the Conservatives and the NDP, both at the expense of the Liberals.
This election will probably cause some call for a change away from the First Past The Post voting system used in Canadian federal (and most provincial) elections, as the Greens took 6.6% of the popular vote with no seats to show for it, whereas the Bloc Québécois took 10.1% of the popular vote and got 49 seats. It’s highly unlikely anything will change any time soon, though.
Watching the CBC Interactive Map is fairly entertaining as the western provinces report results. The prairies (Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba) were entirely Conservative at the beginning. Now little pockets of Liberal and NDP start to show up, especially in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Oop, there it goes, a riding in Central Saskatchewan just flipped back to Conservative. That riding would be Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, where the Conservative candidate currently has 44.68% and the NDP candidate has 44.59%. One to watch!
BC is interesting — so far it appears to be splitting between Conservative and NDP. The Liberals look to be taking a pounding out west. I currently see one lone Liberal riding in all of BC, in Vancouver East. Mind you, only one polling station has reported from there, and the Liberals and NDP are tied with 16 votes each. Way too early to call.
I’m watching two ridings in BC: Victoria (where I cast my vote) and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca (where my wife cast her vote). Neither have reported any votes as of yet. Victoria should probably go NDP, and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca could go Liberal or NDP (watch as it goes Conservative).
Ten seats in New Brunswick. CBC is currently reporting the Conservatives have won five, lead in one. The Liberals have won three, and the NDP one.
Sympatico/MSN News is reporting the Conservatives have won six.
This is the last Atlantic province to be finalized. The Liberals have elected 17, Conservatives 10, NDP 4, with one Independant.
Results courtesy CBC and Sympatico/MSN News.
Nova Scotia had eleven seats up for grabs in the 2008 election. Although the popular vote looks to have split evenly amongst the Liberals (30%), the Conservatives (26%), and the NDP (29%), the Liberals come out the winners, taking five seats. Conservatives took three, NDP took two, and one went to an Independant (Bill Casey in Cumberland-Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley, who used to be in the Conservative caucus).
Results courtesy CBC.
