Voters Urged Not to Eat Their Ballots

[Champ]

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - Canadians went to the polls in a federal election on Monday with a firm warning from election officials: Please do not eat your ballots.



"Eating a ballot, not returning it or otherwise destroying or defacing it constitutes a serious breach of the Canada Elections Act," Elections Canada warns on its Internet (news - web sites) site.


The issue was of sufficient concern to warrant inclusion in the site's "Frequency asked Questions" section, above answers to such inquiries as "Why should I vote?" and "Am I registered?"


Three Alberta men were charged with eating their paper ballots during Canada's last federal election, in 2000. The members of the Edible Ballot Society were protesting against what they said was a lack of real choice among candidates.




http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=583&ncid=583&e=4&u=/nm/20040628/od_nm/canada_politics_eating_dc

[Gothic Sponge]

1. I don't know about you, but ...

i like to have my ballot with some mustard.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

2. Thinking about ballot papers makes me peckish n/t

[iverglas]

3. my mother should have thought of that

She voted this morning, and was nonplussed to discover she'd been given two ballots; the deputy returning officer hadn't separated them when she tore my mother's out of the book.

The DRO would probably have preferred that my mother eat it rather than having to figure out what to do with it when she returned it.