I believe that the reason there has never been a problem with veiled women voting is that up until now, muslim women were either forbidden by their dear husbands from voting, OR they obeyed the laws of the land regarding masks, OR they never tried voting with a veil on before.
This has NOTHING to do with voting rights, and everything to do with further undermining the rule of law. The commissioner has to be a LIEberal appointee.
The correct remedies are:
- a judicial review of the ruling by a court, or,
- referral by the parliamentary committee to the whole House and summoning him before a Committee of the Whole, or,
- parliament to enact amendments to the language in the statute upon which he relies.
He has pointed to language in the statute that allows a person to be vouched for by a person who has shown photo id and barred the person so vouching from vouching for more than one person and has pointed out that thousands of persons vote by mail without having to show their faces to an election official.
If he is wrong in his statutory construction, let him be corrected by a Court or by parliament sitting as a Committee of the Whole
If the statute actually allows such methods of voting and this is not acceptable, let Parliament change it.
And if he ought to be fired, let parliament fire him.
For him to be subject to discipline by less than parliament as a whole is to allow political interference in the electoral process. Elections Canada was explicitly set up to prevent such political interference
I agree that allowing masked persons to vote or to accept a ballot for insertion into a box, whether it be personally or by mail, without adequate identification of the person submitting the ballot is to allow potential fraud.
And this is true whether the person is a veiled Muslim or a nice Catholic girl earning herself the price of a new coat by going from poll-to-poll to vote under fictional names, as I saw happening in Quebec during the 1950s.
Don W and Candor7, I agree with your outrage. But I still maintain that if Mayrand is wrong it is for Parliament as a whole to correct him, not a committee and not the Prime Minister, no matter how many government or opposition politicians agree with him.
And if the statute is wrong, then it is for Parliament to amend it, not for a committee or a Prime Minister to do an end run around it by exerting political pressure on Elections Canada.
Otherwise the next chief electoral officer will have no protection for his independence from political pressure.
Parliament has its remedy and it can be an expeditious one if Parliament has the political will.