According to CTV News at 9:30pm ET Muslim women must remove their face-covering veils, or niqabs if they go to the voter polls.
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Muslim voters required to remove face coverings
Updated Fri. Mar. 23 2007 9:30 PM ET
Muslim women who wish to vote in Monday's Quebec election must now show their faces when they cast their ballots, the province's chief electoral officer announced Friday.
Marcel Blanchet decided to reverse an earlier decision and concluded that Muslim women must remove their face -covering veils, or niqabs, when they vote.
"We were afraid that many people would arrive with a bags on their head, with a Darth Vader mask on the head, with a Halloween costume ... and cause some trouble, refuse to remove the mask," Denis Dion, a spokesman for the chief electoral officer, told reporters.
Blanchet said he was exercising his authority to amend articles in the electoral law to avoid disruptions when residents go to the polls. Prior to the reversal, the law did not include any provisions prohibiting voters from covering their faces.
"Relevant articles to electoral laws were modified to add the following: any person showing up at a polling station must be uncovered to exercise the right to vote," said Blanchet, who was assigned bodyguards after having received threatening phone calls and emails from voters outraged over his initial decision.
Just 24 hours ago, Elections Quebec had decided Muslim women would be allowed to wear the niqab, which leaves only a woman's eyes visible, if they sign a sworn statement attesting to their identity, show two pieces of identification and are accompanied by someone who can vouch for their identity.
Blanchet's initial decision prompted non-Muslim citizens to threaten they would show up at polling stations wearing masks.
One newspaper even suggested to readers how they could "join the masquerade."
"They said look, this has gone too far, we cannot upset the serenity of the voting process, people at the polling stations cannot deal with this sort of silliness, it disrupts the other voters," CTV Montreal's John Grant said.
"So anybody now wearing anything on their face that disguises them, cannot vote. That's the only course of action they saw fit," Grant said of Elections Quebec.
The reversal was blasted by Muslim groups, who said the decision could turn some of their members away from the polls.
"I am so saddened, I doubt many of these women will show up at the polls on Monday after all this mockery," said Sarah Elgazzar of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations. "It's insulting."
