Fiorito: Did you smile? You were voting on candid camera

Fiorito: Did you smile? You were voting on candid camera

If you live on an upper floor in a highrise overlooking the Don Valley, and if you look west at night, you can see the valley woods and they are lovely, dark and deep.

Nice, in a “miles to go before I sleep” sort of way.

If you live in the highrise at 701 Don Valley Rd., and if you had tuned your television to the lobby channel on election day, you could have watched your neighbours lining up to vote at the polling station near the entrance.

Nice, in a “we’re all in this together” sort of way.

But if you had magnified the lobby camera view on your TV screen — given the angle of the spy camera and the placement of the voting tables — then you could have seen, with some degree of certainty, how your neighbours cast their ballots.

And that is not so nice, in a “secret ballot as a cherished principle of democracy” sort of way.

Yes, this is one last small story in the aftermath of the election. Sorry, that’s not quite true; there will be four whole years of stories in the aftermath.

Back to the lobby cam.

I dropped in on my friends Peter and Francoise the other night. They live at the aforementioned building.

Peter’s field is industrial robots. Francoise is an environmental scientist who specializes in brown water. They are a smart couple.

Francoise said, “We voted in the advance poll.” Because of that, they knew whose name was where on the ballot.

We were chatting in their living room. They have a big TV. Francoise had it tuned to the lobby channel. I saw a couple of views of the entrance, and then the spy pen camera cycled over the laundry room, and then it cycled back to the lobby again.

That’s where the polling station was.

Francoise happened to be pet sitting the night of the election. She had turned on the lobby channel to see what sort of crowd she’d have to wade through when she went out.

Peter said, “You could see the backs of the people as they voted, and the mini spy camera was at an angle so that you could see the ballot; if you zoomed in, you couldn’t read the names, but you could tell.”

I glanced at the TV. I saw an old fellow with a walker leave an elevator and enter the lobby. Francoise hit zoom. Up close. Personal.

Yikes.

Peter said, “In this riding, the councillor’s name was at the bottom of the ballot; you could tell. We were sort of stunned.”

What did he do?

“I thought of saying something. I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be. Instead, I sent a letter to the organization that handles municipal elections in the province.”

In the letter, Peter indicated that he wasn’t interested in seeing anyone hauled up on any carpet; he just wanted to be sure that, when polling stations are set up in apartment building lobbies, the position of the lobby wireless spy camera be taken into account.

I’m not sure what anyone would do with the information, by the way. But that’s not the point. The point is that you might think you know how I voted, but you don’t have the right to see me doing it.

I glanced at the TV again.

The old fellow was still sitting on his chair when a young man came by and engaged him in conversation. Francoise said that was the sort of building they lived in; nice, neighbourly.

Peter showed me a note he got in return from the elections guy. I think they’re going to take a look.

An “over the shoulder” sort of look.