Ontario electoral watchdog joins chorus opposing federal election changes

OTTAWA – The chief electoral watchdog in the country’s largest province has added his voice to the mounting criticism over the Harper government’s proposed overhaul of national election laws.

Greg Essensa, Ontario’s chief electoral officer, fears thousands of voters will be disenfranchised by a double whammy contained in Bill C-23: eliminating both vouching and the use of voter information cards to prove residency.

In 2003, Ontario itself did away with the practice of allowing individuals to vouch for voters who don’t have proper identification.

But Essensa says the province compensated for that restriction by allowing voter information cards (VICs) to be used as one of two pieces of valid ID.

He says if the federal government wants to eliminate vouching, it needs to provide some other mechanism to ensure voters without ID are not deprived of their fundamental democratic right to vote.

Pierre Poilievre, the minister responsible for democratic reform, says doing away with vouching and VICs is necessary to prevent voter fraud,but Essensa says he’s never seen evidence of fraud in 22 years of electoral oversight.