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Canada Elections violates my rights by requiring proprietary software? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I know most people here regard electorialism as useless. I do too, but I didn't five years ago. And so I got roped into keeping a dying Electoral District Association on life support. I was the financial officer.

As part of the role I was supposed to file financial reports, but I discovered they must be done using some proprietary software (available for free) that ran only on Windows (which I don't have and haven't had for decades).

Long story short, I reached out for help (to the Green Party), mistakenly assumed they had taken care of it based on their email response... but now 5 years later the Elections Canada is likely fining me for failing to file these documents. Fine range is probably between $100 and $1,500 -- don't know yet.

Anyway, I'm annoyed that running Windows is a requirement for participating in our "democracy". Does anyone know any Canadian free software or other legal organizations that might be interested in filing a formal complaint?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

100tb zipbomb designed to auto-extract to desktop hidden as a tech support claim (if possible) to their IT department.

Should help. Might brick a random dudes computer there but hey, it was funny.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

This shit would tilt me right off the planet.

This seems like a good opportunity to put a legal challenge to this system, though. I don't know canadian law, but I'm fairly confident there's no law on record that can compel you to use any particular operating system on your personal property. The implications of that would be far too big and problematic. Taken a basis for your argument, you are legally unable to comply and cannot be legally compelled to do so. Contacting your party administration shows a good faith effort to satisfy the disclosures through an alternate means. I'd also argue that closed-source/proprietary software meets the common definition of untrustworthy software. A web form might be a reasonable remedy, but I'd probably ask for paper forms because then there's no software requirement at all to participate in bourgeois electoralism.