B.C. Community Services Minister Chong Takes Strong Action!?!

Here is a 'Letter to the Editor' which I have sent to a selection of Black Group newspapers in response to a 'planted' article, written by their Tom Fletcher and which appeared in those newspapers in the last month or so. As far as I can tell, it only appeared in two of them, one of them being the Nanaimo News Bulletin and heavily edited at that. As it turns out, it is as good a way as any to launch my efforts to have the provincial government bring our municipal election rules into the modern age.

Dear Editor,
I read with great interest the recent article by Tom Fletcher regarding Minister of Community Services, Ida Chong's, mission to tighten B. C. civic election rules. With those elections now only 7 months away, the article was, if nothing else, at least timely.
These changes (the enforcement of which, like the rest of the disclosure requirements, will also be spotty and largely ineffective - for just one example of what I am talking about, consider the Bill King case in Nanaimo where this former councillor was acquitted because he had not been given the required 30 days to correct the 'deficiency' in his financial disclosure statement, involving a $1500 campaign contribution from a local developer) are largely minor and irrelevant and, therefore, simply 'window-dressing'.
If Minister Chong were really serious about tightening up the civic election rules, she could start by requiring an independent body to oversee the elections, much like our provincial and federal elections, instead of typically the senior employees of each municipality. Since many of the same politicians who have appointed the local election officials will be candidates in the election, there is at least the very strong perception of a conflict of interest.
Another area which certainly needs to see significant, real tightening is the use of electronic voting machines for counting our votes. The B.C. government needs to develop and maintain a list of tested and approved voting machines and require that municipalities wanting to use them have minimum standards in place to test and verify their proper operation and security. When machines currently being used in a significant number of municipalities in B. C. have been shown to be hackable by anyone with a card reader, a copy of Microsoft Access and a little know-how (see http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ - look for the Hursti hack reports) and 'standard' verification procedures will not catch any irregularities or tampering, I am sure we are all concerned.
We should demand no less from those charged with protecting our hard-fought and precious democratic rights.