Do they even care about informed choices?

For a few weeks I have been quite bothered by the realities of voting by special ballot in the upcoming Newfoundland elections. Some of the issues that I have mentioned in the past relate to the fact that people are allowed to vote before candidates have even been nominated. Now that I have had a chance to look at the Elections Newfoundland and Labrador website more closely it is clear that two additional issues should be addressed.

One of the first things that I noticed today while looking at the Elections Newfoundland and Labrador Information for Electors pamphlet is that all special ballots must be received by October 5, 2011, or almost a week before the election day. If one factors in the incredibly slow Canada Post service that that many people will use it becomes apparent that those voting by special ballot will hardly even be able to observe the formal campaign period before they need to return their ballot. So just because you won't be around for election day you have the good fortune to not be able to use the second half of the campaign to inform your vote choice.

This is clearly unacceptable. Minimally the proces should be changed so that all votes post marked no later than election day are accepted.

A second issue that I was reminded of by visiting the Elections Newfoundland and Labrador website is that the website does not, at least anywhere obvious, contain a list of approved candidates. My recollection is that a similar problem existed during the past two elections as well.

Is it really that hard to provide this information once it becomes available? Not only are a number of media sources able to provide such information, but Elections Canada provides this information.

These issues (and there are probably others that I am not thinking about) when viewed together don't paint a particularly good picture of the electoral system in Newfoundland. I suspect that if we heard about similar practices in other countries we would feel that their electoral systems were less than adequate. Maybe what is most frustrating about these changes is that they don't really need to exist. Fixing most of these problems would likely be relatively inexpensive and straightforward.