Canada: Citizenship only requirement to vote, say two expatriates denied ballots | National Post

Citizenship – and nothing more – guarantees the right to vote, say two disenfranchised Canadian expatriates whose legal struggle to reclaim their votes is headed to the Supreme Court of Canada in a case affecting more than one million non-resident Canadians. Gillian Frank, a Toronto native, and Jamie Duong, a Montreal native, wanted to vote in the 2011 general election but, since both work at U.S. universities, were refused online ballots under a 1993 Canada Elections Act rule that bars citizens from voting if they’ve lived outside Canada for more than five years. The rule was loosely enforced until 2007, when the then-Conservative government said expats’ short-term visits back home no longer reset the five-year clock, as had been the practice.