Elections Canada to Remove 100,000 non-citizens from voters registry.

Creator:Martin Cvetkovi Credit:Getty Images/iStockphoto Copyright:Martin Cvetkovi

As the Federal Elections come closer, Elections Canada is making sure to avoid all the illegitimate voters.

Elections Canada has identified and is set to eliminate nearly 103,000 people from the federal voters register as they are not Canadian citizens.

Chief Electoral Officer Stephane Perrault told the Senate National Finance Committee on Tuesday, that his office identified these disqualified voters and he wishes to remove them before the 2019 Federal Election.

The number of these illegitimate votes in 2015 elections is unknown. The register that holds their names comes from the voter’s list, implying the voters got their voter identification card to guarantee their eligibility to vote. However, a voter information card alone cannot be used as a valid piece of identification at the polls. Elections Canada Website gives three options as a valid identity proof for casting a ballot:

· your driver's licence

· your provincial or territorial ID card

· any other government card with your photo, name and current address

It will require a considerable analysis to precisely calculate the number of illegal votes involved in 2015 elections. Elections Canada is working on how these votes got into the list in the first place.

Though, Perrault said that the priority for now is cleaning up the list for the coming campaign.

“We will have tools that we didn’t have in the past to monitor that,” he said, including tracking who voted through a new electronic list. “We will be able to follow up after the election and check if people have attempted to vote or voted while being non-citizens.”

The ineligible names on the voter’s register were determined because of new powers granted to Elections Canada under the federal Liberals’ Bill C-76, the Elections Modernization Act. This bill made wide-spanning changes to Canada's elections laws, including new limits on spending and foreign participation, while also aiming to boost accessibility and participation in democracy.

Perrault called this a “much needed tool” for a “long recognized issue” of non-citizens appearing on the register of electors.