Photo credit: the Globe and Mail
Canadians living abroad are calling for increased turnout among overseas voters and arguing that barriers to casting a ballot could be affecting election results.
Timothy Veale, the director of Grits Abroad – an organizatioin aimed at connecting Canadian Liberal voters living worldwide – said nearly five million Canadians live outside the country and roughly 3.5 million of them are eligible to vote.
Veale said the share of non-resident Canadians voting in federal elections is mired in the low single digits. He said the causes include mail-only voting, compressed timelines, uncertainty about ballot arrival and delivery and a lack of outreach from party campaigns.
Daniel Scuka, a member of Grits abroad living in Germany, said parties need to “wake up” and encourage Canadians overseas to vote. He said Elections Canada could also be directed to do more to support overseas voting.
Veale said federal parties should see overseas voters as an opportunity.
Elections Canada said in an email that 101,690 voting kits were issued to electors living outside of Canada in the last general election. Of those, 57,440 were returned on time and tallied.
It stated that 20,013 voting kits were returned too late to be counted, while 411 kits were returned on time but could not be counted due to other reasons, such as missing information on the outer envelope.
Elections Canada reported that 23,826 voting kits were either not returned or cancelled by voters residing outside Canada.
