You can read a lot of things about elections online. Some of them are true. Others, not so much. And what’s true for one election might not be true for another. It’s always best to check what the rules are for a particular election with the organization that runs it. For federal elections, that’s Elections Canada!
Elections Canada has created a tool called ElectoFacts to help people figure out if what they see online about federal elections is accurate. This tool would be a great reference for classroom discussions during the federal election, when students might encounter misleading information online.
To get you started, here are some common types of misleading information that can be found online, and the accurate information.
Fiction: Elections are rigged.
Fact: It would be no easy task to pull this off. Once you learn about how the system is designed, you realize how challenging it would be to rig a federal election in Canada.
First, electors cast a ballot for a member of Parliament in their electoral district. A federal election is really 343 elections happening at the same time—one in each electoral district. To influence which party forms the government, you would have to try to affect the outcome in many electoral districts, where thousands of people vote in hundreds of locations. Not an easy thing to do! Even if someone figured out how to influence results across thousands of locations, there are lots of safeguards in place to prevent election interference of all kinds.
Fiction: Voting by mail allows people to vote more than once.
Fact: To vote by mail, using what is called a special ballot, an elector must prove their identity and address, and their name will be crossed off the list of electors. If someone tries to vote again, Elections Canada will find out and report it to the Commissioner of Canada Elections, who is responsible for enforcing the Canada Elections Act.
Fiction: The vote of non-citizens and deceased persons are used to manipulate the outcome.
Fact: These narratives have circulated in elections around the world. There are controls in place to update the list of electors that Elections Canada maintains, called the National Register of Electors. This includes cross-referencing the register with data we receive from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. After an election, all data and materials are examined to find and address any voting irregularities. Breaking federal election laws can have serious consequences, including fines and criminal charges.
One of the narratives we see frequently is that someone could use a voter information card that was sent to a deceased person when they go to vote. But that wouldn’t work. Electors need to prove who they are and where they live. A person will not be able to vote using a voter information card addressed to someone else, because they still need to show ID to prove who they are. They cannot use a voter information card alone to vote.
Fiction: Elections Canada provides pencils so that election workers can smudge ballots that are for candidates they don’t like.
Fact: The pencils and special paper we use prevent smudging. The Canada Elections Act states that Elections Canada must provide pencils, but if people want to bring their own pencil or pen, they can!
Election workers are not allowed to unfold your ballot before it goes in the ballot box, and the ballots are always counted in front of witnesses. So even if smudging were possible, there would be no opportunity for it to happen, whether before, during or after the ballots are counted.
Fiction: Ballot boxes are stuffed with fake ballots to change the outcome.
Fact: This is an easy one to address once you know how things work. When someone casts a ballot, that person’s name is scratched off the list of electors. At the end of the day, before election workers start counting, they have to make sure that the number of people who voted matches the number of ballots at each table. If the numbers don’t match, they cannot start counting. So stuffing ballot boxes can’t happen.
Fiction: Results are rigged during the vote counting.
Fact: Once you see an election in action, you realize that rigging the count would be pretty tough. For one thing, candidates’ representatives are there during the count to observe and keep track as it’s happening. Election workers count the paper ballots by saying out loud who received the vote for each ballot. If a candidate has concerns that something dishonest has happened, they can contest an election. This can result in recounts, fines and criminal charges.
For each polling location, the results are phoned in to the returning office. The results are then put in Elections Canada’s secure computer system so that we can share them on our website.
After election night, the results are validated. This allows for any human error to be caught and reported through one of the many post-election reports published on the Elections Canada website.
Learning more protects our elections and democracy
One way to learn more about what really goes on is to work at a federal election. It’s a great way to see first-hand how the system works, learn more and contribute to our democracy.