Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act

Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act was designed to prevent the transmission of any election results until polls were closed nationwide. Section 329 stated that:

"No person shall transmit the result or purported result of the vote in an electoral district to the public in another electoral district before the close of all of the polling stations in that other electoral district."

But on January 13, 2012, the Canadian government said it planned to repeal Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act due to technological changes and the inability to enforce it. It was just another step in the changing dynamic of journalism, technology, and the democratic process.

The idea of an election in which no one knew the results until voting was over was not present in the 19th century. In 1855, in every province but New Brunswick, voters cast their ballots orally. This led to a system where information on who voted for who could be used for nefarious reasons. Intimidation and blackmail to force people to vote in a certain way.

But another election practice in this time period would not work in later times. This was the practice of holding elections on different dates in different ridings. In this system, knowing or guessing the results of one riding impacted the way the political parties and people acted in the others.

"The system allowed the party in power to hold elections in a safe riding first, hoping in this way to influence the vote in constituencies less favourable to them. The system even enabled a candidate who lost in one riding to run again in another." In some cases this was drawn out to extremes: the 1872 election was stretched out more than two months by the Conservatives.

There was no real effect to the democratic process because of these long, drawn out elections because communication between ridings and provinces was very slow. It wasn't until the railroad and the telegraph that technology could interfere. In 1938, a ban was put in place to stop the transmission of results from one area to another before polls were closed.

At the end of the 20th century the ban started to feel obsolete in the face of technology, but bigger issues came to the surface. Proponents of the ban stated the need to make sure each poll had the same information when they are voting. Opponents of the ban stated freedom of speech as a right that the ban infringed upon.

The ban's main purpose was to compensate for the time gap between Eastern and Western Canada. Before 1996, there was a four-hour difference between closing polls in St. John's and Vancouver. But in 1996 the government imposed another policy to help this gap. They introduced staggered voting hours. "Under staggered voting hours, only results from less than ten percent of ridings could be available to late voters since the majority of polls across Canada open and close at the same time. Despite this, the prohibition on the transmission of election results remains in place."

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