voting

Friday September 10, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday September 10, 2021

It’s time to vote: Advanced polling opening to Canadians during pandemic election

The time to vote has arrived – in person, that is.

October 29, 2014

Millions of Canadians will be able to cast their ballots at voting stations on Friday as advanced polls open across the country. Any eligible voter will have until Sept. 13 to mark their ballots at a polling station in their riding as part of the advanced window.

Advanced voting is proving to be a popular method in Canada’s elections, said Dugald Maudsley, an Elections Canada spokesperson.

He told Global News that in the 2019 election, 4,840,300 voters went out to advanced polls while 3,657,415 did so in 2015.

With the country is in a COVID-19 fourth wave, Maudsley said it’s possible the turnout for advanced polling will increase again this time around – but anything can happen.

“Often (advanced polling stations are) not as crowded, they’re not as busy and it’s a way to get in efficiently and get your vote done,” he said.

“We’re really telling people that voting in person at advanced polls and on election day is still the simplest and most efficient way to vote.”

June 19, 2020

Canada has been in election mode since Aug. 15 and party leaders have been busy touring the country in an effort to get voters on their sides. The leaders took part in the first of two official debates Wednesday night, trading blows in French. The English-language debate took place Thursday night.

The debates are happening at a time when some Canadians still don’t know who they’re voting for. A new Ipsos poll conducted exclusively for Global News found 13 per cent of those surveyed are undecided.

With advanced polling here, Maudsley wants Canadians to know in-person voting will be safe during the fourth wave. He compared in-person voting to visiting the grocery store, and voters can expect Elections Canada staff to follow all health protocols.

Federal Election 2021

For example, he said Canadians can expect poll workers to be wearing face masks and shields, and that they’ll be behind plexiglass. There will also be sanitation stations and social distancing will be enforced.

“You really won’t be there for very long once you’ve checked yourself in,” Maudsley said. “It’s really about a five-minute process to vote.” (Global News) 

 

Friday October 30, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday October 30, 2020

Far-right militias heed Trump’s call for poll watchers, and law enforcement is worried

Far-right militia promoter Josh Ellis can reach more than 20,000 members across the country in a matter of keystrokes. Many followers believe, like him, that the presidential election could be hijacked by leftists, a Trump defeat would plunge the nation into tyrannical rule, and the United States is lurching toward a violent civil war.

October 10, 2014

Ellis, who operates MyMilitia.com and goes by “AR2,” for “American Revolution 2.0,” has advised like-minded citizens to stand guard at voting stations Tuesday as part of President Trump’s “army” of poll watchers — and, if necessary, to use force.

“They are to be out there as patriots, not militias,” Ellis, of suburban Chicago, said in a phone interview before he addressed an “American Patriot Rally” last Saturday in Florida.

“But if they see immediate danger of physical harm to someone,” he said, “they need to intercede and stop it.”

The country is on high alert in the countdown to Election Day. In a hair-trigger time of guns and grievances, anarchists and vigilantes, COVID-19 restrictions and conspiracy theories, the nation’s law enforcement agencies, election protection specialists, and watchdog groups are closely monitoring militant extremists on the right and left while bracing for rogue acts of violence.

Pandemic Times

“There is a serious threat that militias and armed vigilantes will be at polling places and will pose a danger to voters,” said Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremists and hate groups.

The Department of Homeland Security issued a report Oct. 6 warning that violent domestic extremists “might target events related to the 2020 presidential campaigns, the election itself, election results, or the post-election period.”

Two days later, the danger was crystalized when the FBI foiled an alleged plot by 14 suspects tied to the paramilitary Wolverine Watchmen militia to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat sharply criticized by Trump, and try her for treason over her pandemic-driven shutdowns. (Boston Globe) 

 

Tuesday October 27, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday October 27, 2020

New Doug Ford vs. Old Doug Ford: Which one is Premier of Ontario?

Since his election as Ontario Premier in 2018, Doug Ford has been available in two versions.

March 27, 2020

There’s the empathetic, uniting leader who works across political boundaries. He first appeared during the COVID-19 pandemic.

And there’s the original Doug Ford – the angry partisan who sows divisions and does favours for friends.

You may recall version 1.0 from such moves as Mr. Ford’s attempt to name an underqualified old crony, Ron Taverner, as commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police in 2018. It reeked so badly of conflict of interest that Mr. Taverner ultimately withdrew his name from consideration.

November 9, 2019

Doug Ford v. 1.0 was also infamous for unilaterally cutting the size of Toronto City Council from 44 members to 25 in 2018, in the middle of a municipal election. There was no justification for it, but Mr. Ford rammed it through for nakedly partisan reasons.

It was thus a pleasant surprise to see the Premier reboot himself as a less demagogic, more empathetic leader when the pandemic struck.

During the crisis, Doug Ford v. 2.0 has shown an openness to working with the federal Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, and an understanding of the difficulties facing Ontarians. He has spent months praising traditional targets. His government’s actual results leave much to be desired, but his work ethic and lack of partisanship have won him the respect of former critics.

November 17, 2018

And then last week he reverted to prepandemic form, slipping two self-serving measures into omnibus legislation meant to help businesses get through the pandemic.

One measure was a ban on municipalities using ranked ballots in elections, removing an option given to them in 2016 by the former Liberal government.

Ranked ballots let voters choose a first, second and third choice for a council seat or the mayor’s seat; if none of the candidates wins a majority off the bat, the voters’ second and third choices are redistributed until one candidate reaches the 50-per-cent threshold.

His other self-serving measure was to include a school run by a political ally among three Christian schools that are either being given university status or having their right to hand out degrees expanded.

Canada Christian College and School of Graduate Theological Studies in Whitby, Ont., is run by Charles McVety – a polarizing figure who opposes gay marriage and espouses hateful views about LGBTQ people, Islam and other targets. (Continued: Globe & Mail) 

 

Saturday October 17, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday October 17, 2020

Determined voters endure long lines to cast early ballots in historic election

October 2, 2020

Thousands of people, some braving hours-long waits, glitches and politically motivated obstruction, are flocking to cast early ballots and writing the story of a pandemic-era election that may change how America votes.

Heavy turnout at early voting centers in Georgia and Texas comes as many voters elsewhere take advantage of mail-in ballots, defying President Donald Trump’s misleading attempts to cast the election as the most corrupt in history. Another of the President’s many misinformation efforts — his claim that the Obama administration spied on his team — suffered a serious blow on Tuesday when it emerged in a Washington Post report that a Justice Department probe into one key aspect of the conspiracy theory will end without even a public report.

The candidates should have been making last minute preparations for the second presidential debate on Thursday night. But a drama initiated by the President’s diagnosis with Covid-19 caused the cancellation of the event after the President refused to take part in a virtual version — then demanded the reinstatement of the clash when he recovered.

April 30, 2020

Instead, Trump and Biden will take part in dueling town halls on NBC and ABC respectively. The arrangement may be a disservice to voters since they will only have one final chance to see the candidates on stage together on October 22. But given the President’s constant interruptions in the first debate, the format may actually allow a more forensic examination of each candidate’s positions. It is also certain to trigger the former “Apprentice” star’s obsession with television ratings.

Inspirational scenes of eager voters, in some cases in Georgia waiting eight hours to exercise their democratic rights, reflected enthusiasm on both sides at a raw moment in US history at the tail-end of a tumultuous presidential term.

Voters are facing the most difficult circumstances imaginable given the health emergency. Confidence in the election is also being challenged by court battles in a handful of states arising from apparent GOP efforts to complicate early balloting that Democratic voters prefer. There are also infrastructure problems — for example the registration portal in Virginia crashed on Tuesday on the last day when citizens can sign up to vote. 

Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden mostly concentrated Tuesday on winning votes rather than on how they will be counted. (CNN)

“Which brings us to Graeme MacKay (Hamilton Spectator)’s cartoon, comparing our previous attitude towards the commies with the great fall that seems to have gone after our pride, and he’s right not only about standing in line to vote but in the massive lineups for food among those who need it.”

Tuesday November 6, 2018

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 6, 2018

‘Full Trumpism’: President’s apocalyptic attacks reach new level of falsehood

President Donald Trump is painting an astonishingly apocalyptic vision of America under Democratic control in the campaign’s final days, unleashing a torrent of falsehoods and portraying his political opponents as desiring crime, squalor and poverty.

August 18 2017

As voters prepare to render their first verdict on his presidency in Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump is claiming that Democrats want to erase the nation’s borders and provide sanctuary to drug dealers, human traffickers and MS-13 killers. He is warning that they would destroy the economy, obliterate Medicare and unleash a wave of violent crime that endangers families everywhere. And he is alleging that they would transform the United States into Venezuela with socialism run amok.

April 13, 2018

Trump has never been hemmed in by fact, fairness or even logic. The 45th president proudly refuses to apologize and routinely violates the norms of decorum that guided his predecessors. But at one mega-rally after another in the run-up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, Trump has taken his no-boundaries political ethos to a new level — demagoguing the Democrats in a whirl of distortion and using the power of the federal government to amplify his fantastical arguments.

In Columbia, Missouri, the president suggested that Democrats “run around like antifa” demonstrators in black uniforms and black helmets, but underneath, they have “this weak little face” and “go back home into Mommy’s basement.”

February 25, 2017

In Huntington, West Virginia, Trump called predatory immigrants “the worst scum in the world” but alleged that Democrats welcome them by saying, “Fly right in, folks. Come on in. We don’t care who the hell you are, come on in!”

And in Macon, Georgia, he charged that if Democrat Stacey Abrams is elected governor, she would take away the Second Amendment right to bear arms — though as a state official, she would not have the power to change the Constitution.

Unmoored from reality, Trump has at times become a false prophet, too. He has been promising a 10 per cent tax cut for the middle class, though no such legislation exists. And he has sounded alarms over an imminent “invasion” of dangerous “illegal aliens,” referring to a caravan of Central American migrants that includes many women and children, is travelling by foot and is not expected to reach the U.S.-Mexico border for several weeks, if at all.

With his breathtaking cascade of orations, tweets, media appearances and presidential actions, Trump has dictated the terms of the political debate in the final week of the campaign even though he is not up for reelection for two years. (Continued: Hamilton Spectator)