Call it a sit-in for the digital age.

As Canadians go to the polls Monday to elect members of the 41st Parliament, some citizens say they intend to stick it to the man — by tweeting results throughout the day.

Section 329 of the Elections Act forbids Canadians from broadcasting local election results publicly, before all polls in Canada have officially closed. When the law was first enforced in 1938, “broadcasting” was defined by radio and television. But now, tweeting, blogging and Facebooking all make the list.

“This legislation is ridiculously outdated,” says Peter Raaymaker (@rymkrs), a blogger from Ontario, Canada, who intends to be a scofflaw. “It doesn’t reflect the world we live in today.”

Raaymakers isn’t a lone voice. NYU professor Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu), an active social media commentator, stoked the fire by tweeting “So is anyone in Canada organizing a mass tweet-in to protest the (absurd) ban on election night tweeting?”

Apparently, the answer is yes.

A host of deliberate tweets about local election results is expected on Election Day, May 2. “Either we flood the system and [Elections Canada] gets overwhelmed, or we all get fined and end up paying for #elxn41,” tweeted Denis Gagnon (@DenisGagnonJr), a forester from Timmins, Ontario.

In response, he received a chorus of “I’m in’”s.

As Gagnon says, the consequences of tweeting results are fines up to CN$25,000 [about U.S. $26,400].

Is he willing to do it anyway? “I will tweet my results,” he says. “And if I had to, yeah, I’d pay the fine.”

John Enright, Election Canada’s spokesperson, points out that there have been no fines in the last three elections and that the system is strictly complaints-based. “We are not monitoring social media or any other form of transmission,” he says. The plan is to just wait and see how events play out.

To track the protest and see how many flout the law Monday, two Vancouver social media enthusiasts, Darren Barefoot and Alexandra Samuel, have created Tweettheresults.ca, a live Twitter feed that will follow the hashtag #tweettheresults.

Although both have spoken out against the law and believe it is totally unfeasible, Barefoot said in an interview with the National Post, “We’re not actually, arguably, publishing the results ourselves.” Even their tagline, “Bringing you the people who are bringing you Canada’s first real-time election,” is a sort of cop-out on the entire issue.

Even if they don’t tweet, all those participating in the conversation hope this social media rebellion will cause the Canadian government to take note and amend the law. “I do know parliament is aware of this question,” says Enright. “They have heard of this community and its opinions.”

As for the question of what will happen on election night, the reality remains to be seen — will this be the united defiance of Canadian tweeters or the revolution that never was?

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