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."
Muslim groups pointed out that the Canadian Armed Forces and police departments in other Canadian cities allow women to wear the headscarf on active duty.
Quebec's three main political leaders had asked Blanchet to reverse the decision, saying the veil and the vote don't mix.
Liberal Leader Jean Charest requested on Thursday to have the decision reversed that would allow Muslim women to wear their niqab or burqa while casting their ballots.
Parti Quebecois Leader Andre Boisclair and Action democratique du Quebec Leader Mario Dumont agreed with Charest on the issue.
Boisclair said Elections Quebec has taken the hot-button topic of reasonable accommodation too far.
Dumont, who is seeing a surge of support, has struck a chord with some voters with his tough line on the issue of accommodating religious minorities.
"You want to make sure that the person who is standing there is really the person who is on the electoral list and has a right to vote," Dumont said.
In recent months, Quebec has come under the spotlight for its treatment of reasonable accommodation for newcomers.
Sondos Abdelatif, 19, was given the ultimatum to withdraw from a corrections training session at a Montreal jail or remove her headscarf earlier this month.
In February, an 11-year-old Ottawa girl was ejected from a soccer game in Quebec after she refused to remove her headscarf during the game. The incident garnered international attention after soccer's governing body, FIFA, upheld the ban on headscarves.
Furthermore, the small town of Herouxville drew international attention when it adopted a declaration of "norms'' that outlines how immigrants must fit in.
With a report from CTV's Jed Kahane and files from The Associated Press
