Dear Ontario: Section 53 is not the answer!

Posted on: Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Posted at: 9:15 PM

If you go to your polling station on June 12th and decline your ballot, you have not voted for anyone, or anything.

In fact, you have forfeited your right to vote and your vote has been suppressed.

REMEMBER: Voter suppression is a strategy to influence the outcome of an election by discouraging, or preventing people from exercising the right to vote.

The Decline Your Vote web site was launched by a Conservative and it promotes Section 53 of the Ontario Elections Act.

Section 53 of the Ontario Elections Act states:

An elector who has received a ballot and returns it to the deputy returning officer declining to vote, forfeits the right to vote and the deputy returning officer shall immediately write the word “declined” upon the back of the ballot and preserve it to be returned to the returning officer and shall cause an entry to be made in the poll record that the elector declined to vote.

Section 53 of the Ontario Elections Act is not a constructive means of conveying your disgust with this particular election, or any particular party running candidates in this election, etc. — unless you want the Progressive Conservatives to win this election.

2014-06-10  »  somecanuckchick