Monday, January 23, 2006

Blackout Law

I am scheduled to be on Global News tonight to talk about the election night blackout law.

That’s the law which makes it illegal to prematurely transmit election results from regions of the country where the polls are closed to regions where the polls are still open.

You can learn more about this law here and here.

The National Citizens Coalition is helping Paul Bryan fight this law in the courts because we think it infringes on free speech and because we think it’s unenforceable.

In today’s Internet age anybody with a computer can access information and there’s nothing Elections Canada can do to stop them.

We are going to the Supreme Court of Canada later this year to fight this archaic law, so hopefully this will be the last censored election.

Update:

I am going to be on CHQR's The World Tonight at 7:05 Calgary time to talk about the blackout law.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I understand the intent of the blackout law, it is to discourage voters from voting based simply on which party is currently leading in the election results (correct me if I’m mistaken). Is this intention invalid? I believe it is, because this type of law reflects the general premise that the people cannot be trusted to make wise choices.

Having said that, I’m in favour of compromise legislation that prohibits election results from being reported until all the polls across the country are closed. What do you think?

Gerry Nicholls said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Gerry Nicholls said...

Dragev:

I think what you said makes sense.