Bad ballots

Imagine: an election hasn’t even been called yet, you don’t even know who is running, but you’re handed a ballot and told you should write in either a candidate’s name or the party you want to support.

Welcome to the bizarro world of the Newfoundland and Labrador special ballot.

Special ballots are in the news right now because a judge in the province’s Supreme Court has decided that the special ballot system — designed to help bring a ballot to those who cannot get to polling stations from hospitals or special care homes — is unconstitutional.

It’s a decision brought about in a case where special ballots delivered a seat to the thengoverning Progressive Conservatives in the 2011 election— a seat that, in the absence of the special ballots, would have been won by the provincial NDP.

The judge determined voters who use the special ballot are not fully informed about the candidates, and candidates who are not members of a governing party are unfairly disadvantaged.

It’s hard to imagine something sillier than voting without even knowing who the candidates are.

As Judge Gillian Butler pointed out in here decision, “(T)here may be a period of more than 40 days during which special ballot voters may vote without knowing the complete list of officially nominated candidates and only approximately five days in which special ballot voters can cast their vote knowing the full list of candidates.”

Butler said the special ballot rules don’t meet the test of Section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees the right to vote.

“But section 3 protects much more than that,” Judge Butler wrote. “It guarantees the right to meaningfully participate in the electoral process, both as voter and candidate.”

And that means the special ballot voter’s vote counts for less.

“The result is that special ballot voters’ rights to play a meaningful role in the electoral process and to be reasonably informed of all choices, is clearly infringed,” Judge Butler wrote.

It’s also a system that exists nowhere else in the country.

“In allowing votes to be cast prior to a writ of election being proclaimed, the legislature has enacted a provision without precedence in any other Canadian jurisdiction,” th e judge wrote.

Conservative leader Paul Davis, wants the legislature to be called back to deal with the special ballot issue — something that’s kind of funny, because, after all, it was Davis’ own party who benefitted from the current special ballot rules, and his own party that didn’t change those rules over its lengthy tenure.

Something does have to be done. Judge Butler declared the special ballot rules to be of “no force and effect,” meaning new — better — ways have to be found to bring the vote to those who can’t bring themselves to the voting box.

Put short, there have to be other ways.