(Image Source: Calgary Herald)

BY EMOKE BEBIAK           

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

You're watching multisource tech news analysis from Newsy.

In North America, living in an Eastern time zone can mean getting spoilers for your favorite TV Show, and while that seems innocent enough -- what about spoilers for election results? In Canada, that could get you slapped with a $25,000 fine -- but that didn’t stop some rebellious Canucks during Monday’s election.

A writer for Postmedia News says...

“[Even] before a single poll had closed, digital denizens were flirting with creative ways to flout Section 329 of the Canada Elections Act … all in the name of fighting legislation varyingly dubbed draconian, paternalistic and unenforceable.”

Dating back to 1938, Section 329 calls for total media blackout until all polling stations close on the Western coast of the country. That means national broadcasters are not allowed to show election results until three hours after polling stations in the Eastern Territories close.

A writer for the Toronto Star says -- in the era of social media, such a law is nearly impossible to enforce.

“The agency, tasked with upholding an archaic provision … now faces the bizarre conundrum of knowing about widespread online dissemination of election results through Twitter and Facebook, but being powerless to do anything about it.”

During the three-hour blackout, close to 5,000 Tweets were posted with the hashtag “Tweet the results.” But the Canadian Press points out, not many posts actually contained election information.

“‘Tweet the Results’ itself ranked actually third world-wide and top in Canada during that three-hour period. But there was a very small portion of that that was actually what I’d call signal, so something that was meaningful to the purpose of that hashtag, which was actually sharing election results.”

Finally, a columnist for CBC News wonders just how much social media could actually influence the vote.

He writes: “...online activity is very difficult to link with the offline behavior of marking a ballot with a golf pencil. Ultimately, once you're behind that cardboard partition, voting is a private action. A secret ballot is, after all, secret.”

In the end, Canada’s Conservative Party won 167 of 308 seats in the Parliament’s lower house, while the left-leaning New Democratic Party got 102. The once-ruling Liberal Party suffered the greatest rollback, securing only 34 seats.

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