Social media vs Elections Canada

Some tech-savvy voters made a point of challenging a decades old law on election night, using social media to transmit real-time election results.

Elections Canada prohibits the broadcast of any election results until polls have closed from coast to coast. The law dates back to 1938 and offenders can be fined as much as $25,000.

"The act doesn't speak to the platform, it doesn't speak to what mechanism or what tool is used to transmit," said Elections Canada spokesperson John Enright.

In an effort to circumvent the law, some users of the social network Twitter worked around the blackout by emailing results to people in other countries, who in turn broadcast them online.

"This law struck me as equally silly and equally patronizing of voters," said Australian journalist Bernard Keane, who posted results from Atlantic Canada as soon as they came in. "As a fairly strong supporter of free speech it seems to be a pretty easy way of standing up for free speech," Keane said.

To date only one person has ever been charged with breaching the act. In 2000 a Vancouver blogger posted early results online and incurred a $1,000 fine.

However, elections officials aren't going out of their way to pursue offenders. Investigations are only launched when an official complaint is filed, and take into account the public interest in pursuing charges.

"We are not monitoring social media in any way shape or form, that's not the role of Elections Canada," Enright said. "Our role is to inform."

With files from Carole Anne Guay