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11th September 2021 14:40
Link to Post #201
Avalon Member
Re: Extreme Covid measures in Canada... as Loony as ever.
Well, looks like that was an easy prediction it will be a rigged election.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/record...l3uSv8%2Fyo%3D
'Record-High Use of Mail-In Ballots Could Mean No Clear Winner on Election Night: Elections Canada Official
By James Risdon September 10, 2021 Updated: September 10, 2021 biggersmaller Print
Record-high numbers of mail-in ballots in this federal election may well leave Canadians wondering who won when they go to bed, hours after the polls have closed on Sept. 20, if there are a lot of tight races.
“In places where the races are tight, we may not know who won on election night,” Elections Canada spokesperson Natasha Gauthier told The Epoch Times. “We may not have an outcome.”
With only 10 days to go before the election, polls show the Conservatives and Liberals in what is essentially a dead heat.
Tight election races at the riding level could leave mail-in ballots upsetting the anticipated results at the last minute. Mail-in ballots might only be counted by Sept. 25, five days after the election, says Gauthier.
“Depending on the volume of those special ballots, it could take two to five days to count them … and get all the results,” she says.
Before they can even be counted, mail-in ballots have to be verified by Elections Canada staffers to ensure there is no election fraud. Then, all the mail-in ballots have to be counted by hand. There are no machines to tally them up.
“In the last federal election, 50,000 voted by mail-in ballot and that includes 35,000 Canadians who live abroad,” said Gauthier.
This year, the COVID-19 pandemic has made a lot of Canadians much more wary of voting in person. Requests for mail-in ballots are skyrocketing.
On Sept. 10, the federal agency that administers elections reported that 795,606 Canadians had already requested to vote by mail-in ballot, including 674,663 who live in the riding in which they are going to vote.
That’s almost 16 times as many mail-in ballots as in the last federal election in Canada—and voters still have until Sept. 14 to request the voting kits to cast their ballots through the mail.
Gauthier says the agency is ready to handle that volume.
During the third wave of COVID-19, Elections Canada started gearing up for what it then believed could be as many as five million votes coming through the mail. Since then, COVID-19 daily case counts have fallen and vaccination rates have risen, and so the agency has revised its expectations.
“It could be two to three million votes by mail,” says Gauthier. “Every election, there’s always an uptick (in the number of mail-in ballots requested) on the last day.”
While it’s impossible to predict with certainty how many people will cast their ballots on election day, Elections Canada’s figures show about 19 million Canadians voted in the last federal election in 2019.
A similar voter turnout with two million mail-in ballots in this election would mean that more than 10 percent of the vote in this upcoming election would only be counted the days after the polls have closed.
That’s more than enough of a margin to make all the difference between winning and losing in swing ridings.
Although counting the mail-in ballots could take up to five days, every one of those ballots has to be received by Elections Canada before the polls close on Sept. 20.
Voters who get their mail-in ballot ahead of election day but too late to send them back in time can take their ballot to the local returning office or their polling station—or have it delivered there—before the polls close, said Gauthier.
Anyone who requests a mail-in ballot and does not get it in time can also simply show up at the polling station and vote in person after taking an oath stating they never received the ballot.
James Risdon
James Risdon
James Risdon is an award-winning journalist based in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada.'
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11th September 2021 17:51
Link to Post #202