The Commissioner of Elections on Wednesday confirmed another case of an ineligible foreigner casting a federal ballot, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.
It follows in-house data that found a third of returning officers encountered attempts at balloting by people whose names were not on the National Register Of Electors.
“Documentary evidence provided by Elections Canada to the commissioner included the Official List Of Electors for a polling station in Simcoe-Grey, ON,” the commissioner said in a statement.
Cross checks with a Department of Immigration database showed one foreign national, Michael James Wiest, cast a ballot in 2021.
The Commissioner did not disclose Wiest’s nationality. He was fined $1,250.
“Wiest went to the poll, approached the voting desk, signed a registration certificate and voted,” said the commissioner.
“This series of deliberate steps suggests the contravention was deliberate and intentional.”
In-house research at Elections Canada has found 35% of returning officers and poll clerks “sometimes or often encountered individuals asking to vote who were not on the list of electors and who were unable to be registered,” according to a 2020 Survey Of Election Officers.
A total 14% of poll workers said they knew of prospective voters who could not prove their ID, and 6% reported outright fraud.
Checks on immigration department lists followed a 2019 disclosure that 112,000 foreigners were on the National Register Of Electors. Another 200,000 names were deemed “inactive,” including dead people.
“I can tell you we have made some considerable improvements to ensure the accuracy of the list, to make sure it is a list of Canadian citizens,” Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault told reporters at the time.
“We’ve had a chance to clean up the list considerably.”
Elections Canada in an earlier Inquiry Of Ministry tabled in the Commons said it was too much work to determine if any of the 112,000 foreigners cast ballots. “
A complete review of the voting records would require Elections Canada to open more than 68,000 poll bags,” said the Inquiry.
“This would be a massive undertaking.”
The Commissioner of Elections in 2019 acknowledged investigators knew of dozens of cases in which foreigners posing as Canadian citizens had cast federal ballots.
“The Commissioner has determined that, for 57 instances of individuals casting a ballot at a federal election while not being Canadian citizens, the evidence did not provide a reasonable prospect of conviction,” the agency said in an Access To Information memo.
“Formal compliance or enforcement action was not in the public interest.”
