Spoiled Ballot

It's one thing to throw away your vote. It's quite another to throw away someone else's vote. Especially if you can't even be bothered to buy it first:

Alexander James MacKenzie hopped on his motorcycle a free man Friday, the name Ballot Box Bandit painted on the bike's gas tank.

Mr. MacKenzie, 56, received a suspended sentence for his second conviction in recent years for stealing and destroying a ballot box during a federal election.

The Crown wanted to send the Little Harbour, N.S., resident to jail for 14 days for a Jan. 23 incident during the last federal election.

Mr. MacKenzie walked out of a polling station with a box containing 57 cast ballots, set it on the ground outside, then ran over it with his pickup truck. All of the ballots were salvaged.

It was his second such act of civil disobedience in his lengthy, one-man fight to get compensation for non-natives he says have been affected by pollution from the Boat Harbour, N.S., treatment plant.

In November 2000, he stole a ballot box from his polling station in Little Harbour and threw it into the nearby treatment lagoon. That act earned him 30 days of house arrest, probation and community service.

What this fool did is not civil disobedience. Destroying a ballot box does nothing to call attention to his cause, except to cast discredit upon it and himself.

It is no different from the street theatre that passes as political protest, especially among "progressives", these days.

He would have done just as well to eat his ballot instead.

Source: Globe and Mail