The Tories' argument is that the voting station was not authorized and therefore, the votes should not be allowed. They're right, but why should students be penalized for mistakes made by the officer in charge. They were just trying to get a better chance of winning the riding by annulling 700 votes by students who would most likely vote Liberal or NDP. It is not right to be doing this and even they realize it. After they made their initial complaint, Guy Giorno then said that it was OK to let the votes through.
THORNHILL—All party leaders are urging voters — especially young voters — to turn out in droves to cast a ballot on May 2.
But only one party appears to have an interest in driving down the participation of 18-to-24-year-olds in this campaign, says an expert on youth voting patterns. And now the Conservative Party is facing an allegation of election tampering after trying to have 700 votes cast by students earlier this week at the University of Guelph declared null and void.Read more at the Toronto Star.
One problem with your premise. Even if the votes were torn up, it does NOT disenfranchise the students since we still have more than two weeks before the election. They could STILL have voted again by either special ballot, or advance poll if they so desired as well. So it's not like this is happening after an election and they would lose their vote. They wouldn't have been penalized at all since they still would have been able to vote regardless.
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