This could be big

Kate at Small Dead Animals has the text of a complaint to Elections Canada by the Conservative Candidate in Edmonton Centre. It alleges many, many irregularities in the voters list for that riding:

• Almost 100 apparently nonexistent addresses in Edmonton's downtown core - in some cases, the addresses listed fictional residences in between two genuine buildings.
• Hundreds of people registered to vote out of their law offices, medical offices, accounting offices, and Government of Canada offices - in some cases these may be genuine errors, but in other cases, entire families are registered to vote out of high rise office space.
• Dozens of people registered to vote out of office towers, but who did not list a suite number, causing the address to read similarly to ordinary residences - in many cases, these people are also registered to vote in other ridings using their home addresses, and in other cases, voters living in other ridings are only registered in Edmonton Centre.
• Dozens of people registered to vote out of small mail box locations and from self-storage yards - there is no legitimate way for a person to appear on the list of Electors from a self-storage yard.
• Eighteen people registered to vote out of a truck stop.
• People registered to vote out of karaoke bars, lingerie stores, dance lounges, galleries, etc...

Edmonton Centre is of course the riding of Landslide Annie, who earned her nickname by squeaking into office with multiple consecutive slim majorities of votes. Are the allegations true? How long has it been going on? Is it the result of fraud, or is it just some sort of screw up? I'm hoping some enterprising reporters will start investigating.

Posted by Bruce Gottfred at January 21, 2006 01:48 PM | TrackBack