so, the bloc are floating this idea of banning people from voting unless they show their faces again, and i wish they'd just drop it, because it's too far and i'm sure it's hurting them, politically. it really makes them look stupid. there are valid arguments underlying the ban on religious symbols in the workplace, especially the classroom, but it's a lot harder to make sense of why somebody needs to take off their scarves to receive public services. i think there's a strong argument that the motives underlying the services ban actually are racist, which is undermining the more valid arguments around the workplace ban.

there's a lot to unpack, here.

first, is voting even a government service? i would have thought of it as exercising a right, not receiving a service. we certainly have a whole constitutional apparatus around voting rights, and denying them based on one's clothing is about as absurd as you could get. as i stated earlier - voting rights are absolute. the only time i can think of justifiably suspending them would be from behind a jail cell.

but, even if it was a government service, are these people not taxpayers? are they not entitled to services?

with voting, specifically, there's an issue of being able to identify the voter. i'm not saying that this has ever happened, but you could potentially steal an election by sending the same handful of women in niqabs over and over, if nobody checks their id. ok. it's not particularly controversial to suggest that you need to identify yourself before voting, but there's other ways to do that besides leaving your scarf at the door. the supreme court has ruled that stating a solemn oath is good enough, which is probably too lax - equipping at least one voting centre in each riding with staff that can accommodate the request to unveil in private is probably a better idea. but, whatever rules you want to put in place, you have to make sure they have the opportunity to vote.

it's going to be interesting to me to see how the bloc's recent momentum reacts to this. one would have thought it was obvious that you should keep quiet about this, given how people have reacted to it for however many years.

they may have shot themselves in the foot.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/national/election-2019/bloc-quebecois-calls-for-end-to-veiled-voting/wcm/10b1508e-da1c-40e5-a07c-20ccbbc9bee8

the liberals are supposed to do better than this.