Possible Canadian 2020 election

[robkelk]

Some background:

As of this posting, Canada has a minority government. With more than two parties, it's possible that the party that gets the largest number of seats in the House of Commons does not get a majority of seats in the House of Commons, and thus is required to form alliances within the chamber in order to "command a majority of votes in the House" and thus have the legal prerequisite to form a government.

The Liberals prorogued Parliament last week, ending the last session of Parliament. The next session of Parliament will start early next month.

Every session of Parliament begins with a Speech from the Throne, written by the Head of Government and read by the Head of State (in Canada, these are two different people), followed by a vote to accept the speech. This is a vote of confidence in the current government - if it fails, the government is dissolved (the state remains in place) and we go to an election. And in a minority government, if all of the other parties vote against a government motion, it fails.


So, there's a possibility that there might be a general election in Canada this year. Now what?

Normally, there's a 65-day campaign followed by a vote on a Monday. But there's an elephant in the room this year, and its name is COVID-19.

How to protect voters? Sure, there's always mail-in ballots, just like in every general election. But the bureaucrats at Elections Canada have another idea: move the election forward one and two days, having the voting take place over the weekend, and rent more facilities to have a larger number of polling places with a smaller number of voters at each polling place.

Sure, this costs more money than a usual election does... but Canada can afford to protect its citizens this way.

[hazard]

Seems to me Canada has its election priorities in order.

[robkelk]

And we're making these plans despite not knowing whether we'll need them. But, hey, better to have and not need, than need and not have, right?

[hazard]

Indeed.

Sure, it costs a bit of money and time to plan for such an eventuality, and a bit more once in a while to keep the plans current, but at minimum you'll have a starting point for when it's needed and you need to put an election infrastructure together in 2 months.

Well, realistically in only 1 month at the most. You need to have everything in place before the summons to vote go out in the mail.

[robkelk]

That's why we have Elections Canada - the skeleton of the system is always in place. EDIT: And we can get on the voter list simply by checking one box on our tax forms.

[robkelk]

Did some checking on the Elections Canada website, and discovered the two-day voting period would require an amendment to the Elections Act. If the vote on the Speech from the Throne fails, that won't happen.

But they can use administrative authority to switch to single-use pencils... and to increase the capacity of the existing vote-by-mail system.

EDIT: And there's the nuclear option:

In an extreme and unexpected case, based on the advice of public health experts, the Chief Electoral Officer could certify that it has become impracticable for Elections Canada to administer the election in one or several electoral districts and recommend to the governor-in-council that the election writ be withdrawn. This has never been done in Elections Canada's history.