Almost a year after the last federal election, Elections Canada is still unsure if thousands of ballots were casted by non-citizens.
According to CBC, Elections Canada is aware of at least 3,500 people who may not have been Canadian citizens when they voted for the Oct. 21, 2019 federal election.
In a statement, Elections Canada said they are still examining each suspicious voter. According to their own analysis, Elections Canada claims that potentially fraudulent votes would not have changed the result in any riding.
“No outcome in any riding would have been affected by possible instances of non-citizen voting,” Elections Canada said.
“We have no evidence that suggests any organized or large-scale effort to disrupt the electoral process.”
While Elections Canada is confident in the integrity of the 2019 election, concerns surrounding non-citizens voting have persisted for years.
In May of 2019, Elections Canada removed over 103,000 non-citizens on the national voters’ registry. Anyone on the official list of eligible voters could have received a voter identification card, which is a legal form of voter identification in order to cast a ballot.
At least 40,000 non-citizens had been on the registry since 1997.
In October 2019, a British citizen living in Alberta received a voter registration card despite not being Canadian. Peter Gabriel later learned that another non-citizen he works with also received a registration card.
“I didn’t think very much of it. I thought, ‘this is just a mistake,’” said Gabriel in a viral video.
“I’ve been here 19 years and I’ve never had one yet.”
In 2018, True North Founder Candice Malcolm reported that an asylum seeker received a letter from Elections Canada to inform her that she is “not currently registered to vote in federal elections.”
The letter urged her to register to vote, stating that “registering in advance will ensure you’re on the voters list and will save you time at the polls.”
At the time of the report, the woman was still taking English-language classes and her husband’s refugee application was still pending.
