The Emperor has no Clothes
(Submitted to the Vancouver
Sun, May 30, 2001)
The Emperor has no clothes, and Paul Bryan of ElectionResultsCanada.com has called him on it.
The law pretending to stop the flow of information from one electoral district to another is intolerable and just plain silly. If Mr. Bryan is found guilty, then one of the following must be true. Either he was in eastern Canada on election night (which I doubt), or he had access to privileged information on eastern returns (which I also doubt), or he got that information from sources available to any Canadian who wanted it.
Is Mr. Bryan to be tried for taking information that was already available anywhere and making it available, again? Reductio ad absurdum! In our modern global village, even the eastern media would have to be charged under this act as soon as they published the results 'in the East'.
You can be sure that every Western investor, reporter and politician had the results before Paul Bryan posted them. Borders are transparent in the new Information Age. All Mr. Bryan did was point his finger at what should be obvious to all of us. Instead of wasting resources trying to shut him up, perhaps the Emperor should just get dressed.
TO: Feedback
at ElectionResultsCanada.com
DATE: June 10, 2001
Hi,
Some of the earlier feedback contains truth,
but not the whole truth.
Howard wrote:
>Voting can be influenced by knowing trends, but the same
opportunity is not
available to all regions of the country.
Yes, that's true! And If the results are _not_ available in
the West when
they are in the East, then investors and other stakeholders in
the East have
a significant advantage, "but the same opportunity is not
available to all
regions of the country." The only _fair_ solution is
to keep the results
completely secret until they can be released _everywhere_.
CC wrote:
>Boy you're dumb. It does not require a giant intellect to
understand the
reason for this law.
Yes, that's true! This law was a misguided attempt to cover
up grave
defects in the Canadian electoral process. If minority
voters had more of a
voice in our elections, there would be no use for strategic
voting, and no
need to stay home because our votes will be wasted. Maybe
the government
should have initiated some electoral reform like Proportional
Representation
or Preferential Balloting.
CC also wrote:
>The Internet is just communication. There is *no*
fundamental difference
between your posting results early on the internet and some fool
in the 19th
century posting early results from telegraph communication on the
town
bulletin board.
Also true! This law was no less misguided when it
prosecuted that earlier
"fool" who cried, "Look, the Emperor has no
clothes!" What the Internet
does, with its open accessibility, is draw attention to the
futility and
immorality of suppressing freedom of speech in _any_ medium.
Bob wrote:
>You are wrong and you broke a well-intentioned Canadian
law. I trust that
the Courts ... right up to the Supreme Court of Canada will rule
against
you. Civil disobedience is just that!
(Yes, and we all know what the Road to Hell is paved with.)
Civil disobedience has a long and honorable history. We
have a
Constitution, and many times, breaking the law is the only way to
get the
Courts to re-examine a law's constitutionality. Quite a few
Election "Gag
Laws" have been overturned recently after they were
challenged by citizens.
Sure, there are risks to those who push these issues. But,
as long as one's
own actions are moral and "well-intentioned", where is
the dishonour?
Sure it's futile to "push a rope up hill". But
sometimes one comes to
believe, in the words of Martin Luther, "Here I stand I can
do no other."
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Last Updated: 29-Jul-2001