Canada's prime minister wants to make it harder for people to vote against him

[n2doc]

Acclaimed Canadian author Margaret Atwood faced censorship in the national press late last week for her satirical take on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hair. It might have been a rather amusing episode if it wasn’t symptomatic of darker, Orwellian trends that have marked Harper’s nine years in office.

Stephen Marche’s article in the New York Times mid-month does an excellent job of summarizing how Harper has pulled tight the reins of power, stifled criticism and eroded the freedoms of Canadians. But it is in the prime minister’s assaults on the most fundamental of democratic acts, a citizen’s right to vote, that Harper’s lust for control finds its most disturbing outlet.

Not confident of winning re-election on merit in October, he’s pushed through a series of legal changes spearheaded by the perversely named Fair Elections Act. Harper’s front man for the task, the aptly titled democratic reform minister, Pierre Poilievre, brushed off critics, claiming the changes are “common sense”. But it’s more likely that, after winning by an uncomfortably small margin in the last election and, after nine years, having the distinct honor of the lowest job creation numbers since World War II and least economic growth since the 1960s, Harper is making sure potential naysayers have a harder time accessing the polls.

The Fair Elections Act strips Elections Canada, the nonpartisan government body responsible for administering elections, of its authority to actively encourage citizens to vote – a matter, we’re told, that is the responsibility of political parties to promote. And on voting day, incumbent candidates and not Elections Canada will appoint polling supervisors. This hardly smells like democracy.

more

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/28/canada-stephen-harper-harder-to-vote?CMP=ema_565

[Gothmog]

1. Harper want to duplicate some of the GOP voter suppression tactics

[DonCoquixote]

2. Canada, let me be blunt

If you do not get Harper out of there, expect to hear the same thing you said to us when Bush got reelected. We only had tow times to make him lose, this will be your third. Three strikes, and you might as well be out, even if the Blue Jays win the World Series.