Toronto Sun: NEWS - Bill would make voting mandatory

Toronto Sun: NEWS - Bill would make voting mandatory

Making elections mandatory? Right this sounds like a good idea in theory. But I can already see more money being flushed down the toilet worse than the current gun registry bill. First would be to re-do the current permanent voters registration list. Hundreds of people at each election must register to vote period. This is because they have somehow been left off the voters registration list or there are errors on them. Add the fact that some university students are away from home during election time. I, for one, voted in Ottawa when I went to school at the University of Ottawa during one federal election in the last five years. I had to register at the polls while my name in Aurora was never crossed off the list. So under Harb's new law would I be fined for not voting in Aurora yet I still voted in Ottawa? I would think so since the federal government cannot even keep a simple thing like handling easy imputted information into a database for guns in order.

Add another interesting thing, there are dead people on the voters list probably. Would these people be fined and have their estates penalized because some bureaucrat in Ottawa doesn't know this person is dead? Why burden the families of the dead with yet another piece of paperwork to file in order to have their names removed from the voters list in order to avoid a potential fine. We already know how badly the government messed up the heating rebate cheques of a couple of years ago when people who rented (even though their heat was included in their rents by law) and the dead received cheques. That went over quite well with some people who never even saw a dime.

I would propose that government not head down this road until it has all the kinks worked out of the gun registry worked out. Try working on one problem at a time before creating yet another possible boondoggle after another. But then again, that might be too simple.