Elections Canada youth vote vids vs ... puffin poop?

)

Noon Update : Hill Times : "Elections Canada says a video ad the Conservative government cited as the type of advertising campaign it wants to prohibit the elections agency from using under the proposed new election law was never actually aired." 
The ad was uploaded to their own Youtube account in 2008 by FluoHill, the art collective that produced it.
Mayrand cancelled it before it aired in 2007. Back to original post :

This Elections Canada video promoting the youth vote is exactly what the Cons intend their Fair Elections Act to put a stop to, an anonymous gov official told The Hill Times, providing them with a link to the video. 

As you can see, it shows Xs representing ballot votes moving from a rock concert to a recycling symbol and industry emitters and ends in a quiet forest : "Vote. Shape your world."
Interesting that the Cons would cop to admitting that a vid loosely advocating that youth exercise their vote for a cleaner environment in a better world is not in the Cons' own best interests.

" ... the official reiterated the government’s position that political parties and candidates, not Elections Canada, would be responsible for increasing voter turnout under Bill C-23."

Right. So just for comparison, here is an example of the kind of "political parties and candidates" outreach the anon gov official is presumably referring to : the Con Party puffin poop election ad that came out at the same time as the EC vid [that never aired]:

)

Galvanizing stuff really, except that six year olds don't have the vote. 

A spokesperson for Minister of State for Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre (Nepean Carleton, Ont.) said the government is addressing the content of Elections Canada voting promotion campaigns.

I'll bet. Can't be offending the industry dudes who wrote the Environmental Assessment Act 2012 for them. 

And I'm way past fed up with this Con tripe about shutting down EC's ads promoting the youth vote - on the grounds they are not successful because the youth vote hasn't increased -in favour of having individual political parties do it instead. Party ads targeting youth have run concurrently with the EC ads so using the Cons' correlation error logic, they've already proven they don't work either.

You know what does keep the youth vote from dropping off the electoral map entirely? Vouching. The next election will presumably fall in October 2015. How many students who just moved to a new campus the previous month are going to have voter ID with a current address for that riding one month after they arrive in it?

Remember that scene in Annie Hall when some pompous pontificating blowhard in a theatre line-up is grandly interpreting Marshall McLuhan and McLuhan shows up and says he's full of shit? If only life was like that, says Woody Allen.
Well that happened to the Cons this week when Harry Neufeld, the expert they've been heavily citing in support of their bid to kill off vouching and voter info cards due to widespread voter fraud, showed up and said they were full of shit. 
Neufeld's argument in favour of actually widening the use of vouching and on the dangers of the Cons' new voter suppression bill here.

Poilievre of course just shrugged it off. He likes his own pompous pontificating blowhard interpretation of Neufeld's report better than he likes Neufeld's.

The Cons don't even care any more that the Fair Elections Act has been revealed to be a ploy to suppress the vote. They're just counting on Team Con showing up to vote and as many other voters as possible becoming too disgusted to bother.
.

Surprise! We Are Voting! No You Aren't!

(updated below)
You really have to wonder what was going through the head of Michael Sona, communications director for Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke, when he barged into the special advance ballot arranged by Elections Canada for students at Guelph University, "making a huge scene stating that this polling station was illegal and tried to grab for the ballot box."

Maybe he thought the two previously successful federal election polls held at U of G were quite enough. Maybe he saw another party's ads too close to the polling station. Maybe, like John Baird, he found all this 'get out the youth vote' flash mob stuff to be "disconcerting".

Or just maybe he realized there was no friggin way there was anything like a majority of Con votes among those 700 sealed votes in those ballot boxes. In which case - interesting he would cop to that.

Guelph was also where the original non-partisan vote mob was held on April 4th in response to Rick Mercer's challenge to young people to "do the unexpected" and get out and vote.

The Cons didn't much care for that one either :

Several students who were participants in the non-partisan "Surprise! Youth are voting!" flash mob outside the Con rally in Guelph were refused entry into the Con rally afterwards by the RCMP despite having registered for it :

"A Conservative Party of Canada official approached them and indicated they were not welcome because of their involvement in an action that was perceived as a protest by party insiders".

Now the Conservative Party of Canada has written to Elections Canada yesterday to disqualify the Guelph students' votes :

"request that none of the votes collected during the U of G session be included in the final tally of votes in the Guelph riding. The letter was sent by lawyer Arthur Hamilton, of Toronto-based law firm, Cassels Brock."

[Say, aren't you the same Con lawyer who dished the dirt on Helena Guergis? ]

"Elections Canada media advisor James Hale said this was the third election during which the university of Guelph held a special ballot on campus. And this is the first time it’s ever been challenged, Hale said."

Well you know the Cons aren't overly fond of Elections Canada either at the moment.

Meanwhile the Vote Mobs : Youth are voting this election! rolls on across the country. Watch their vids. Pretty inspiring stuff.

More : Dr. Dawg.

Friday Night Update : Elections Canada rejects Tory effort to annul votes at University of Guelph 

The Guelph ballot collection was not technically an advance poll but rather a way to collect a batch of 'special' ballots which are put in sealed envelopes and then the students' names will then be checked against the voters list on May 2. So to answer Con lawyer's complaint - proximity of election ads to collection box presumably even not an issue.  Former DRO James Bow explains it at Dr. Dawg's.

Elections Canada News Release via Dammit Janet :

"A special ballot coordinator, appointed by the local returning officer, oversaw the activities at the University of Guelph. All information at our disposal indicates that the votes were cast in a manner that respects the Canada Elections Act and are valid."

So the Guelph campus vote has been validated by Elections Canada, however EC has ruled against future ballot collection sessions on campus instead of at the local EC office.

Score one for the Cons here. Remember this was the third election that such a ballot collection session was held on Guelph campus to enable students in the middle of exams to vote. Con operative makes a grab for the ballot box, Con Party sends off lawyery letter, and now EC has clarified against any other campus doing this for students in future in this election.

They really are the Contempt party, aren't they?
.
Saturday Night Update : Elections Canada Senior General Counsel issues what appears to be a mild rebuke of the Con spin :

"In his letter, Mr. Hamilton refers to calls that were placed yesterday to the Public Inquiries unit regarding the situation at Guelph University and the statements made by Mr. Boutet who tried to assist him. I have spoken to Mr. Boutet and he indicated that he had not understood the situation as described in Mr. Hamilton's letter."

Lead Now : Tell Elections Canada: Let Students Vote on Campus 
 .

Known country for old men

EKOS, April 1, 2011 dual landline/cell phone sampling of 2929 Canadians over 18. Margin of error +/- 1.8% point 19 times out of 20.

According to Elections Canada, only 37% of eligible voters under 25 voted in the 2008 election, compared to 59% among all age groups. In 1988, 75.3 % of all eligible voters voted.

Update : "Surprise. We are voting" Good on you, Canadian youth.

Meanwhile Steve's handlers throw a couple of 19 year old first time voters out of a Con rally after they discovered one of them had a picture of herself with Iggy posted on her facebook page. Because it would obviously be a really really bad thing if she were to check out all the parties first before voting.

Another student is arrested for walking across a parking lot to his car while not being one of the many other Con supporters in the parking lot and yet another student is reportedly "barred because she had participated with the Sierra youth coalition on climate change at the Cancun conference last December".

Can't have that.

Several students who were participants in the non-partisan "Surprise. Youth are voting" flash mob outside the Con rally in Guelph were refused entry into the Con rally afterwards by the RCMP despite having registered for it :

"A Conservative Party of Canada official approached them and indicated they were not welcome because of their involvement in an action that was perceived as a protest by party insiders".

Flash mob to promote youth participation in voting = protest - to Con "party insiders".

Well done, dickheads.

.