In Canada, we have a quaint election law that prevents media from releasing poll results until everyone has voted. The CBC reports that Paul Bryan, a BC based programmer who posted East Coast results to his website before West Coast polls closed, has had Elections Canada's case against him reserved for judgement. What does this mean? Basically, more litigation shall ensue because Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act restricts Canadians to an archaic election practice. The BC Supreme Court has already acquitted Bryan of violating the gag law, but now the Attorney General of Canada--feeling the need to flex his bureaucratic muscles--is forcing an appeal of the ruling. h3. Its not a non-issue, but it is a dead one. Canada already has staggered voting hours, so why would any measure of communication restriction be sensible? According to Bryan, "what we're talking about here is a law that was enacted at the time of the telegraph…a lot has changed since then…we walk up to our computers or our cellphones and we transmit information to each other like that." The ability to post sensitive information on the web was not a new or rare development prior to the 2000 federal election. Surely someone in Ottawa has abandoned parchment in favour of technology manufactured in the last ten years? This case has caught Elections Canada with its pants down and the institution now seeks to blind its ridiculers rather than deal with the gaffe that led to its exposure. Furthermore, if the government's position on premature exposure to election results is so extreme, then as Bryan argues, "government should not release information to some of the public, then order them to keep their mouths shut, under threat of fine." h3. Sadly, BC Doesn't Matter Anyway My feeling is that the biggest issue being kept under wraps via Elections Canada's swagger is the unfortunate truth that Western Canada's votes don't matter much in the first place; federal elections are already decided as soon as Ontario closes its voting booths. Heck it seems most Prime Ministers have finished naming their cabinet ministers long before BC's poll results are released.