Guest editorial from Kamloops This Week
There’s a secrecy envelope, into which you place your completed ballot, using only an ‘X’ or a check mark in the white circle next to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
Next, you place the secrecy envelope into the certification envelope, ensuring you seal the certification envelope only after you are certain the secrecy envelope is tucked firmly inside the certification envelope.
Then, you must sign your name on the certification envelope and include your birth date and telephone number.
Next, leave the back of the certification envelope blank, unless you have changed your name or address (presumably since the May 2009 provincial election).
Then, take the certification envelope, which contains the secrecy envelope, which in turn contains the completed ballot, and slide it into the yellow ballot package envelope, which you must seal.
There. You are now a successful voter in the referendum on the fate of the harmonized sales tax.
All you need to do now is mail the yellow ballot package envelope containing the certification envelope, which contains the secrecy envelope, which contains the completed ballot.
There may be a few other steps, such as walking into the bathroom in Riverside Park and passing along the secret phrase (‘The eagle has landed’) to the man in the fedora, who will hand you a briefcase you need to deliver to the lady in the sunglasses posing as a waitress at a yet-to-be determined eatery in Sahali, whereupon your completed ballot, secure in the secrecy envelope, which rests in the certification envelope, which is nestled in the yellow ballot package envelope, will be counted in the referendum.
Yes, the HST referendum packages have arrived in the mail and the process makes Don Adams’ entrance on Get Smart seem positively dull by comparison.
After doing the secret-agent dance in voting either ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the much-maligned question seems as straightforward as Route 33 in Saskatchewan: “Are you in favour of extinguishing the HST and reinstating the PST in conjunction with the GST?”
But, the process involved to cast your ballot by mail would make Patriot Act authors proud and begs the question: If we can collectively bank online and shuffle billions of dollars a day, can we not vote online on a question that requires a nod or shake of the head?