Students and ‘stolen votes’

Re: “Stolen votes? Let’s hope not, Marois says of fraud allegations” (Gazette, March 24)

The Parti Québécois is becoming more scared that it could lose the next election, so it is inventing this idea of stolen votes by students. And yet the chief electoral officer has stated that everything is running normally. If someone meets the basic requirements, then he or she should have every right to vote in the upcoming election.

As for “stolen votes,” the PQ is in familiar territory here, as there were tens of thousands of No votes rejected in the 1995 referendum as a result of interventions by PQ-appointed poll officers.

And as for PQ claims that the Liberals are supposedly running a “fear campaign,” it was actually the PQ who used the word “referendum” first in this campaign; and as much as it would like to hide the fact, separation is its objective. Robert Anstee

Montreal

After taking a beating in the polls recently, the PQ has rolled out a new and disturbing tactic: voter suppression, which is being implemented through the denial of the right to vote by certain Quebec residents.

Voter-eligibility requirements state that a person must prove he or she has lived in Quebec for at least six months, and intends to stay in Quebec for the foreseeable future. No enrolment in the provincial healthcare system is necessary, and yet voterregistration officials have been citing lack of such enrolment as a reason for refusing hundreds of anglophone and allophone university students their right to vote.

In a rabid display of fearmongering, PQ candidates have indicated that these students are actually “Ontarians” or residents from other parts of Canada, pretending to be Quebecers in order to tilt the election in a federalist direction. To try to reframe documented voter suppression as a countrywide English-Canadian conspiracy is bad enough. But for the PQ to fail to recognize that the reason so many of these students are registering in the first place is because of the imminent possibility of a referendum under a PQ majority is just plain ignorance.

Nathan Munn Plateau Mont-Royal

Perhaps all voters presenting themselves at voting stations on April 7 should be asked if they intend to remain “in permanence” in Quebec. And if they answer “Not Sure,” because they do not want to face another referendum, will they then be told they are not eligible to vote? William Campbell

Montreal

On Friday, March 21, I went to the designated voter-registration station to have my name added to the list of electors in the riding of Sainte-Marie—Saint-Jacques. The employee I principally spoke with was Mathieu Vandal, the same Mathieu Vandal who so publicly resigned out of frustration over processing voter-registration requests.

I spoke to him principally in French and he did his best to do his job and to be cordial; I could see, however, that he was extremely stressed.

He was also quite vocally upset with the person in front of me in line. He simply couldn’t understand why so many anglophones were aiming to get on the voter list. That this is the case doesn’t necessarily imply voter fraud at all. In fact, the likelihood in my view is that anglophones and allophones feel largely disenfranchised by the political process and haven’t voted much in Quebec in the past.

The state of affairs today is such that PQ government’s proposed values charter is highly unpopular with anglophones and allophones, and there are referendum questions in the air; this is going to have a direct impact on the desire of those not in the majority to have their say through the voting process. I have no doubt Vandal was trying to do his job to the best of his ability. Yet his frustration at the lack of clarity over documentation regarding residency doesn’t mean citizens, who have the right to vote, are engaging in fraud. Mark Grenon Montreal

Blaming Ontario for stealing the vote is ludicrous. How is it that a leader like Pauline Marois, whose leadership within her own party has been fragile in recent years, can think she can instil in Quebecers at large confidence that she is fit to run the province? I better visit family in Ontario prior to the April 7 election. Depending on the outcome, the current escalating paranoia may result in the erection of Checkpoint Pauline on the eastbound Highway 401 eastbound. John Ryan Pierrefonds

The self-righteous indignation and outrage on the part of Pauline Marois and her justice minister Bernard St-Arnaud that students from Ontario may be “stealing” the election by registering to vote is just the latest pathetic attempt by the imploding Péquistes to reverse their downward spiral.

It is a true paradox that Marois, who embraced and depended on students in the Maple Spring, is now fearing the legitimate voting rights of what may be only a few hundred students in a couple of ridings.

John Bray Beaconsfield

I find it difficult to believe that this is the first time in the history of Quebec elections that any student in Montreal who is originally from another province has decided to register to vote. In the past, were they allowed to vote? If there are additional eligibility requirements now, why were they never clearly spelled out by the office of the Quebec chief electoral officer prior to this 2014 election? Accusations of voter fraud are yet another example of how nasty the PQ is toward those who are not pure laine. Students were simply following the guidelines spelled out on the Elections Quebec website. Gayle A. Shinder

Côte St-Luc