In this monologue, Tod Maffin recounts the 70‑year history of Canada’s Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act, which prohibited the transmission of early election results across time zones. He explains the law’s origin in 1938, its severe penalties, and the 2000 arrest of British Columbia resident Paul Bryan for posting Atlantic results online, which led to a Supreme Court split decision that upheld the ban despite acknowledging its infringement on free expression. Maffin then describes how the rapid growth of blogs, social media, and other digital platforms made enforcement impossible, culminating in Ottawa’s 2012 announcement (via Twitter) that the law was outdated, and its formal repeal by 2014. He argues that the repeal demonstrates trust in voters, that early results do not materially affect voting behavior, and that democracy is stronger when citizens are allowed information rather than being “parented” by restrictive legislation.
Chapters
Let's talk about the time that how reporting election results got one BC man arrested. It is election day today, and as usual, the polls close in the early evening on the East Coast, which means if you're in BC like I am, you could start hearing results as early as 4 o'clock today, a full 4 hours before polls close out west. It wasn't always that way. For more than 70 years, it was illegal to tell your fellow Canadians how the election was going if they happened to live a few time zones away. It was Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act. It was born in 1938 when transmitting results meant a guy with a fedora and a telegraph, not a teenager with a TikTok account. It's long, the act, but it basically came down to this: no transmission of early results before the polls closed out west, because apparently the biggest threat to democracy wasn't corruption or voter suppression, it was your Aunt Linda in Halifax telling her cousin in Vancouver, "Looks like the Conservatives are up by 2," and suddenly the entire west coast would drop their pencils and panic and vote for the Moose Party out of spite. But they enforced this law, which came with the potential of 5 years in prison. And in 2000, a man in BC named Paul Bryan posted Atlantic Canadian results online. Now, he wasn't running a media empire, he was just a guy with a website, but he was arrested under that law, his computers taken away, and charged with reporting results before the polls closed in BC. He fought that all the way to the Supreme Court, where a split decision ruled that yes, this law did stomp all over freedom of expression, but it was for a greater good. So he lost and was fined $1,000. A greater good, mind you, based on no actual real evidence. Even expert testimony in court admitted that knowing the results a few hours early didn't actually change how people voted. Meanwhile, of course, technology just kept on moving. Blogs exploded, Facebook spread like the STI it is, and by 2008, people were openly defying the law online. There was no way to stop it. Finally, in 2012, Ottawa admitted that the law was outdated and impossible to enforce. They repealed the ban, fittingly announced on Twitter, and by In 2014, it was officially dead. Canadians were finally trusted to handle early election results without having an existential crisis in the ballot booth. And guess what? Democracy survived. The sky didn't fall. Western Canadians didn't suddenly forget how to mark an X because someone in New Brunswick had already decided. Look, if our electoral system can be derailed just because voters have access to a few early results, our system wasn't strong to begin with. Democracy isn't about protecting people from information, it's about trusting them to think for themselves, even if the facts are inconvenient or early. So tonight, when you see results pop up before the last polls close, remember, you're not witnessing the downfall of the country. You're witnessing something better: a democracy that finally grew up and stopped trying to parent its citizens with a roll of duct tape.
