Elections BC warns candidates: don’t tweet on election day

VANCOUVER – Tech-savvy candidates have prompted Elections BC to issue a warning that the province’s 17-year-old election law forbids Twitter and Facebook postings on voting day.

Elections BC spokesman Don Main says the agency was alerted that Liberal candidate Richard Lee, who is running in Burnaby North, had been tweeting, despite a provision in the Election Act that prohibits broadcasting or transmitting advertising on election day.

Main says Elections BC has interpreted that section of the act to include online postings to social media.

He says the parties have been warned, and Lee has since taken down his offending Twitter posts.

But it’s not difficult to find other candidates who have posted on election day, including NDP Leader Adrian Dix, whose most recent tweet is timestamped at about 6 a.m.

Main says enforcement is complaint-driven, and he can’t say what, if anything, could happen to candidates who tweeted on voting day.