Be careful with your ballots

Mail in ballot system - good or bad? I suppose that depends on your point of view. Personally, I'm not all that crazy about it. I actually enjoy going to the polling place, filling out my ballot, and dropping it in the box. I like that I have to make a small effort to actually go and vote. It is a privilege to be able to vote in elections.

When Clarington decided to change to the mail-in format there were a number of people who warned that this may not be the best way to go. The municipality argued that it would increase returns substantially if they made it easier for everyone to vote. Well, in 2003 we had a return of only about 35% of ballots (with mail-in voting). Perhaps if people had been made to travel all the way to a polling station (for most, within a few minutes drive of their home) we would have had an even more pitiful turnout?

The difference here is that one wonders what happened to the 65% of ballots that were not mailed back to the municipality. Today, with the very visible animosity among some of the candidates and all the sign vandalism, the intimidation tactics taken by some - it makes you wonder how many of the discarded ballots could possibly be picked up by an unscrupulous person, filled out and mailed in. I am not accusing any candidates of doing this, but there are some "supporters" out there who it seems will stop at nothing to try to 'help' their candidate to win. Not everyone is as honest as you or me.

There seems to be ample opportunity for this type of ballot stuffing and I seem to remember there were extra ballots in the election 3 years ago that could have changed the outcome for some of the candidates, but I don't believe anything was done about it.

This time around, there are still concerns that have not been addressed to the satisfaction of quite a few people. Although the municipality and clerk's office have tried to address these problems, we still feel there is room for improvement. People are being asked to shred or otherwise destroy ballots "or put them in the garbage, rather than recycling them", Patti Barrie said in a This Week article. That could be a lot of ballots ending up in the garbage.

As well, there have been discussions with Canada Post "and we've been assured that the kits that are addressed to a box are not dropped in the lobby," said Ms. Barrie. Any that aren't addressed to a specific apartment are to be returned to the municipality."

The point isn't only where Canada Post delivers the kits to. I lived in an apartment for quite some time, and I know that people who get "junk mail" or unwanted ballots simply drop them in the lobby when they find them in their box. That is a great place for unscrupulous people to pick up plenty of unmarked ballots. The municipality, to my knowledge, does not check/verify the signatures on the forms, so anyone could be filling those out, couldn't they?

This all begs the question... Just how accurate is our system of mail-in ballot voting in Clarington? There are other areas of concern as well, such as how/where ballots are stored for weeks on end after they begin coming in from voters.

If you care enough to vote, then you care enough to make the effort to vote in person. Internet voting may be the next step, and I'll be in favour of that if it can be made secure. I do not feel that our mail-in system is secure at all.

So, PLEASE... if you are not going to vote, DESTROY your ballot when you receive it. Shred it. Mark it up so as to spoil it. Rip it up. Then put it in the garbage, not the blue box. But please be sure to destroy the ballot, for the sake of the integrity of this election.