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Canada's Conservatives Misled Voters With Massive Robocall Operation
choongiri writes "Elections Canada has just traced thousands of illegal phone calls made during the 2011 federal election to a company that worked for the Conservative Party across the country. The automated VOIP 'robocalls' appeared to be designed to stop non-Conservative voters from casting ballots in key ridings by falsely telling voters that the location of their polling stations had changed, causing them to go to the wrong location on election day. This news casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of Canada's Government. The Conservatives narrowly won their 'majority' by 6,201 votes in 14 ridings, with only 39% of the popular vote." For those as unfamiliar with the term "riding" in this context as I was, here's Wikipedia's explanation.
Some calls apparently were from people claiming to be with the Liberal party, acting rude, calling at very late/early hours, in an attempt to cause people who said they supported the Liberal party to not vote for them. These calls happened in multitudes of ridings (districts for you yanks) including Etobicoke Centre where the Conservative candidate won by only 26 votes.
They're the Corporate-Regressive party, our own home-grown copy of American neoliberal parties like the GOP. No real Canadian actually thinks they are legitimate.
... at least he admits he's evil.
US voters must pay a $2 E-voting card fee but you can save $1 buying that card at this site (put scam site hear) we take pay pal and all major credit cards.
Don't delay pay now and avoid the $10 on site fee.
Why isn't this in the mainstream news?
Jonathanjk.com
Looks like we have room to improve in our own game of a--hole politics. Kudos to the Conservative Party of Canada for taking douchebaggery to a new height. I for one am looking forward to 2AM robocalls from A-mericans S-ingularly S-upporting H-elping O-bama L-ead E-lections to not be a useless lazy bastard and go vote for Obama at my new interstate voting station.
They also made significant changes to the election system and advertised it poorly, several years ago. You Americans in the audience might be familiar with this sort of tactic: requiring forms of identification that younger and poorer voters were less likely to have, in the name of combating electoral fraud. I worked the polls that year and it was a real goddamn treat explaining to people from all walks of life that they couldn't vote because they didn't bring the right ID. Some came back later. Some didn't. The whole thing was an awful bottleneck.
There hasn't been a government elected by the majority of Canadians since 1949! In fact I remember a government that publicly stated they would abolish a national sales tax and then didn't! That same government lasted for 7 years, through two elections, never getting more than 41% of the vote! Shocking I tell you. Just shocking.
It is a stretch to say that this "casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of Canada's Government'. It is disturbing and not inside baseball.
However, the government needs 154 seats to form a majority in the 308 seat lower house and it has 165, an 11 seat margin. Even if they lost all 14 of these narrowly contested ridings, they would still have had a minority government.
How many were fooled by these calls? Certainly some were, even hundreds might have been. But enough to flip more than one or two seats the other way? I doubt it.
There hasn't been a shred of honour in Canadian politics for years. There has been money in brown envelopes passed under tables, secret backroom deals, underhanded smear campaigns. But absolutely no honour at all.
How about a recall of even a single Con. MP? Could we get enough Canadians to do that? Would that do anything at all?
So, some illegal calls are just fine, then. And the media is being biased when they report about them.
I can't believe we have to debate this.
All i can say is : http://www.fairvote.ca/en/problem
The conservative party has always felt to me, to be the bend over forward type of party when it comes to the US. The Liberals, not much better.
I'm posting anonymously because I'm afraid of where the north american governments are heading. Between police riots during the G8, (that's right police rioting on people), the G8 being held in a major populated area... who's bright idea was that! and the crackdown on Internet and IP rights. I think the conservative party is being bought up by corporate greed and paid off.
Our fine Conservative party is working as designed, nothing new to report. It's funny the crap that people will put up with - obvious lies about war, torture, electoral fraud - once they've decided one party is 'tough' and well-organized and the other are hapless fools. As Hunter Thompson said in '72, there are only two real parties, the Winners and Losers. And people would rather go with a Winner than with Honest. (Also, the Liberals have been spiraling downwards since they were clearly convicted - in the public mind and indeed in a few court cases - with brazen corruption about using public money for their own adverts. They haven't done their time in exile yet, so we're kind of stuck with the Conservatives.)
But my Not Utterly Off-Topic factoid is that "riding" is not the only thing that has vanished in England but survives in Canada. I was looking up the "Sheriff of Nottingham" once and wondered how "Sheriff" had translated from the 1100's to a western lawman. Turns out it's a slurring of "Shire Reeve", where "Reeve" was the commoner that kept order, provided public services, and collected taxes on behalf of the nobleman that owned the shire. It mentioned that "Reeve" survives today only in small Canadian municipalities that aren't big enough to call the head a "Mayor".
There's a big difference between a minority and a majority government. And who's to say what the effect was? There was large scale elections fraud by the party that won the election, thus, their right to govern is in question. Even if no ridings were swayed, whoever was involved violated the elections act and, if they were elected, are in office illegally.
Wow Canada, I didn't know you had it in you. You have to give them kudos for the creativity at least. They didn't go with the ol' rigging voting machines gag. A+ for creativity. If the Canadian media hasn't given a name to this debacle yet, I'd like to propose RoboGate. Shall we vote on it?
Not to say it's right; but this is the right wing MO for election fraud. In the USA, the left wing prefers to register illegal voters (felons, non-citizens) or dead people. You see, the left is "progressive" and wants to extend voting rights to everybody. The right is conservative and wants to reduce voting rights. I bet it's no different in Canada. How many frozen popsicles and husky dogs voted for the other party?
Illegal methods can undermine the legitimacy of a government even if they weren't ultimately responsible for winning the election. Just ask Richard Nixon.
... in canada. It's using a massively out-dated first past the post system while others use proportional representation. The country has been a two party liberal/con dictatorship for a long time and the elites like it that way. There is very little difference between how liberals and conservatives enact policy. Both govern from the right. Mots Canadians sadly are just as stupid as their american counterparts. In fact a majority of Canadians don't even know how parliament works. Voting today is a mere exercise in corporate marketing and branding then in anything else.
I'd say most modern government structures in the 21st century are obsolete because of what science has discovered about the human mind.
http://bit.ly/dYaWUc
I strongly hope this leads to a new election (with very strict oversight). Clearly the last election was tampered with in such a way that the outcome was altered, thus a new election is needed. While I hate elections, I hate knowing a party wrongly gained power even more.
Unfortunately, I'm less glad the subject seems to keep being our Harper Government(tm) doing some technologically backwards (ACTA, the C-60 DRM bill, the C-30 internet spying bill). And now they've descended into outright voter fraud - having inherited the other sleazeball methods of US right-wing politics (attack ads, stupid "tough of crime" policies, etc.)
I hope a number of people go to jail for a long, long time over this. From what we can tell, this occurred in dozens of ridings including a number that Conservatives only won by less than 100 votes. The Cons have thrown one staffer under the bus (incidentally, he was caught trying to grab a box of ballots and run out of a polling station as well last year, but yet, managed to stay employed with the party) - but there is no way he could've gotten all the voter info and done this on such a wide scale.
Personally, I hope that the RCMP gets involved, pulls the logs from the robocall company, and each and every seat won by the Conservatives where cheating was involved is recalled. Yeah, it'll be expensive - but so is three more years of these Nixonian, Stasi-like unethical dirt bags in office.
I have never voted for the NDP but I kept on getting propaganda from them presumably because the previous tenant was presumably an ardent supporter. At two different occasions, I received robocalls informing me that I was about to be placed in a conference call with the local NDP candidate around dinner time and I had a hell of a time getting the phone to hang up as it kept on calling me back when I put down the receiver.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Unfortunately we, in the states (and many other countries?) have also seen this sort of thing.
The Ohio elections were tainted by claims of electronic voting irregularities (don't know what became of that) and I believe several republican operatives have been convicted of similar phone hacking activities. I could go on about the hypocrisy of republican claims of voter fraud (despite ANY actual verified proof) which their solutions have the well documented effect of disenfranchising the poor and minorities. (Notice how many times those who warn you not to trust anyone are, themselves, the ones you shouldn't trust?).
Still, it's evident that the root cause is their religious self-righteousness these people feel that allows them to justify blatantly illegal acts (to only themselves fortunately, we aren't Indonesia yet!). If you honestly believed that you, or your party is doing the work of God (unlike say Obama who Rick Sanctorum says follows a "false theology"), you'd also do ANYTHING to guide you, your family and your country into the arms of God. I suspect some of their moral "leaders" don't really believe this and are just using these issues for personal gain just like they hypocritically advocate economic policies which they know will hurt the average republican voter (but pays off handsomely for them; isn't that right Rush Limbaugh?)
Maybe that's why the founding fathers put such a clear line between Church and State (please read Jefferson's exact, specific, detailed words on the subject before claiming otherwise).
Of course what's really scary are the number of evangelicals who are HOPING that the end times are here and are willing, again, to do anything to bring it about. My American Jewish friend thinks that is the only explanation for the fact that the fate of Israel completely controls American foreign policy (in the last republican debate, all the candidates indicated defending it was of the highest national priority). He cannot imagine that the Jewish lobby, significant as it is, could possibly generate that level of support.
Our only hope, if we get another Republican into office, is that they are one of the hypocritical ones and they understand that blowing up the world won't automatically send them (and their families!) to Heaven. Fortunately, all these religious "leaders" all over the world seem to understand this; notice any high ranking Ayatollahs volunteering for suicide belt duty?
Of course... not much will happen. The link below from an article about a Waterloo phone call problem, which also mentions the Guelph robocall problems listed in TFA above.
"Under the Elections Act, an election in a specific riding can be overturned if a "competent court" finds "there were irregularities, fraud or corrupt or illegal practices that affected the result of the election."
However any application to the court to contest the election must be made within 30 days of the election results being published in the Canada Gazette. A complaint can also be made the same day the applicant "knew or should have known of the occurrence of the alleged irregularity, fraud, corrupt practice or illegal practice."
Moreover, the Commissioner of Canada Elections would have to investigate and refer the matter to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, which would in turn decide whether charges were warranted. All of which means it is premature even to suggest any election results could conceivably be overturned."
http://www.citytv.com/toronto/citynews/news/national/article/189607--inaccuracies-happen-elections-canada-says-after-misleading-phone-call
This is exactly the mindset that pushes the Tories to continually break the law.
Politicians. They're the same world over.
As much as I object to Tories I felt the need to FTFY.
My gran used to say "Son, the problem with politics in this country is that only politicians get into it."
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Come on, even Sun Media and the National Post aren't being particularly charitable towards the Conservatives about this. And about Toews' privacy bill. And about Peter MacKay's using military personnel to conduct investigations for politics' sake. Hopefully they come down on the crime bill soon.
How do we go about ensuring some sort of repercussions happen as a result of this? It seems to me that the Conservatives are able to pull off all kinds of stuff time and time again, without any effect. Should we, as voters, start recall campaigns? Or is there some mechanism for Elections Canada to invalidate an election?
So far one staffer has resigned as the allegations have landed, in what appears to be a case of falling-on-the-sword-itis. The scale of the scandal is actually pretty massive. As TFA points out, these calls have been confirmed to appear in 18 ridings, and others are being suspected. In those 18 ridings, the calls only hit households that were waffling Liberal (as per recent polling).
What this means is that someone had to plan the calls, get the party affiliation information on these 18 ridings (at least), hire RackNine, hire a bilingual voice actor, and see everything through. The likelihood of one person pulling all this off is next to nil, and it doesn't help that the Conservative party has a (rightly deserved) reputation for bullying and playing dirty pool with the rules.
And since it's going to come up, the Conservative Party of Canada is actually the result of a merger between two separate parties: the original Progressive Conservatives, who were the centre-right answer to the Liberal's centre-left, and the Canadian Alliance-née-Reform party, the country's (relatively)-far-right party. Prime Minister Harper was previously a member of the Canadian Alliance, and it's safe to say that his view, regardless of his party's, doesn't represent the overwhelming majority of Canadians. He's not all bad, but I will throw a party he is unceremoniously dumped from the Canadian political scene.
I lived in the Minister of Defence, Peter Mackay's riding for a few years in university.
There were literally people by the polling station in the student union telling students (most would vote Green Party) the polling station had moved. There was no liberal candidate as the Green Party Leader and the Liberal leader weren't opposing each other in their ridings. (No liberal candidate in Antigonish, no green wherever the liberal's from)
Absolutely Despicable.
And that also means that The Harper Government would also be out.
Oh, the Canadian press and some minority politicians will feign indignation over this, months after the election, just as they are indignant over auditor reports that their policies waste ta payer money and are destructive to the country and ignore existing laws. But nothing will happen. The Canadian electorate will continue to snore. And the well-connected will continue to collect. A pity this is not a democracy...
I'd say it simply means any and all people involved in this, and knowingly approving of it, are simply not fit to do ANY sort of governing in any democracy. This also goes for those who cover them.
Until you followed those vectors you don't even know how much of the conservative party is left (and what exist cannot govern period). If those vectors aren't followed, what does it say about Canada's claim to being a democracy?
What's with the conservative friendly language?
This whole thing is disgusting - and only the conservatives benefited.
Canadian Genocide is, in some ways, worse than the Nazis. Harper is just the latest figurehead propping up the genocidal, colonial regime for HRH Liz II: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6637396204037343133
This actually says there is a very high chance that the past election was stolen, any chance is too big of a chance to be tolerated. If there is any shred of dignity in them, they will have to do a completely new election immediately and every law they passed while in office will have to be reviewed and decided whether to uphold it or cancel it outright as it is no longer a legally endorsed law as it was made my criminals or through the help of criminal aid.
And the lowest possible sentence anyone in this scandal should get is 20 years in no less than a medium security prison without chance of parole and I would honestly say the death penalty had better be on the table as one of the options as I would like to see a few people hang for this as an example. This is treason here.
I honestly wish my own country, the USA hadn't sold us out and had done this a few times over the past 12 years, but no such luck. Many of us Americans actually look up to you Canadians now as the land of the free (minus your cable and phone companies of course...). You are closer to free than we are now, don't fall down this slope, trust me, unless you are already earning millions, you won't like where it leads.
You're right! A quick search shows that there have been cases of voter fraud as you say. (My apologies).
However, an equally quick search checking a non-partisan site (http://www.truthaboutfraud.org/, second hit on Google) indicates that the republican response, not only far outweighs these violations but would not have served to correct them. In fact, as I said before, the only discernible reason for these measures were to disenfranchise voters who were poor and or minorities. These, of course, are in the Democratic demographic.
I said nothing about which party has historically oppressed minorities (but from the subliminal guilt in your response I'd be willing to make a large bet that you're white!). I am fully aware that the Republican party is the heir to Lincoln. However Lyndon B. Johnson knew what he was talking about when he passed the civil rights act that he'd "given the South to the Republicans for a generation". He could read between the lines. Can you?
Unfortunately, judging from the KIND of attacks on Obama it looks like its taking a lot longer than a single generation.
The headline is seriously torqued, bordering on libel.
The Conservative Party of Canada hasn't be proven to have committed any crime.
The robocaller company (RackNine), is "Conservative" connected by virtue of having Conservative Party of Canada as a customer and I guess being based in the west.
The facts haven't come out yet, so we shouldn't throw stones.
It is plausible that the robo calls were done by one or two people. Canada is a bilingual country, no voice actor is required.
It seems highly unlikely that this was funded and organized by the Conservative party of Canada as an official part of their strategy.
By same, do you mean winning elections?
Naw say it isn't so.
Having grown up in Jesus-land I've realized that they will justify anything as long as its for Jesus.
The governor general should call an election to restore confidence in Parliament (and IMHO, Harper should be barred from leading the Conservatives -- you shouldn't be able to come back as Prime Minister after a "contempt of parliament" ruling).
4 more years of this is insane. Now is the time to fix it.
I'm not Canadian so my analysis may not be totally the same as it is in America but consider:
Why do people bother doing this kind of thing? Are these people who are rigging the phone systems or (allegedly) tampering with the voting machines getting richer? Are they, themselves the ones running for office (or working closely with those who are?)
By and large no. In our countries (unlike say India where rigging an election can bring you a great deal of personal advancement) they likely won't gain "materially" in a big way. So why do they risk fines and significant jail time (as well as probably being labelled as a felon) for ths kind of thing? It's only an election for Christ's sake!
Well that's exactly it, for (extremely?) religious people it IS for Christ's sake! I mean if you really, truly believe in God, there should be absolutely nothing, including strapping on a bomb vest and blowing up some infidels, that you shouldn't do for the good of God. (In fact, I must say, these Muslims seem to be the only religious people who take God seriously. Not that I'm encouraging you to.). So, tampering with the vote is literally nothing by comparison.
The only things that even come close to religion in motivating people are Family and Country. (I'm not a Bible expert but didn't God ask someone to kill his own kid? So religion is more powerful than Family). And Country is powerful enough as is; just ask Oliver North.
Actually, no. There hasn't been a legitimate governing body in Canada since 1931 when the colonial provisional government was dissolved ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Westminster_1931 [wikipedia.org] ) and the provinces were granted the right to convene an assembly of first ministers and establish a federation. Instead, they didn't do so, and everyone kept play-acting that the decaying vestiges of the military government were the de jure government. They're not, although they continue to act as the de facto government. Technically, from a constitutional legality point of view, Canada has been in a state of anarchy since Dec. 11, 1931. The "Government of Canada" is just the biggest, best-organized syndicate playing out its own perverted whims in this lawless and ungoverned northern wasteland. Of course, they don't teach anyone that in the syndicate-run schools, so most people (except some die-hard Quebec Nationalists) have no idea...
Nothing less will solve it.
This hurts not one not some but all.
treason of the highest order.
Its the second cousin of terror.
As someone who voted for the Conservatives in the last election I have to say I find this every disturbing. Everyone expects politicians to play hardball with each other: name-calling, negative campaigning, scare-mongering, over promising. No one likes it but it is what it is.
But playing hardball with voters is crossing the line. Every Canadian citizen has a right to vote, and someone in the conservative caucus was interfering with that right then they should be put in jail.
The funny thing is while I don't agree with many of the polices of this government I can at least understand why they are doing it. But between Toews, MacKay, and now this, I think the problem with the Tories is not policy but personality. Some of them are just assholes.
The smoke has yet to clear on this, so putting this at the feet of the Conservative Party of Canada is premature and possibly libellous.
In all likelihood, this is either the work of a rogue agent or even a well-intentioned mistake. More than that, if a rogue agent it is possible that this agent is actually a supporter of one of the opposition parties, either playing a deeper game, or mistakenly including supporters of opposition parties when actually intending to encourage Conservative supporters not to vote. (How would this agent know, for example, who the supporters of a given party are? Votes are secret, after all.)
It is conceivable that this is simply a mistake. For example, suppose that there was some discussion between election officials during the pre-election period about an anticipated uptick in voter participation. It is possible that someone was commissioned to handle notifications, but was not included in a subsequent decision not to make any change. Admittedly, this is not a likely scenario, but until the facts are all in we simply do not know. My personal bet (you saw it here first!) is that this was a botched operation by some union activitists.
For those peeing themselves in their haste to cast blame, patience. On the face of it, it looks like the person behind this will be chased to ground. First, I think that this was paid for by a credit card. Second, according to reports, the audio was professionally produced, meaning that voice actors were used -- voice actors who will likely come forward.
This company seems incredibly stupid. Who gives some stranger with a credit card access to a giant phone bank that can call millions of people and deliver an arbitrary voice message uploaded by cell phone?
Insanity. They're just asking to be used as part of a giant DoS attack. Suppose the listed numbers were for hospitals, airports, or government offices?
Actually, no. There hasn't been a legitimate governing body in Canada since 1931 when the colonial provisional government was dissolved ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Westminster_1931 [wikipedia.org] ) and the provinces were granted the right to convene an assembly of first ministers and establish a federation.
It was granted "the right", not "the obligation", and the Statute explicitly stated it did not require ratification.
Like what happened in the states, like in Florida, where dead people just happen pop out of the grave and vote
The dead people were getting old, so they moved from Chicago to Miami, like most people in Chicago do when they get older.
Interesting factoid:
It's not commonly known, but the reason so many old people end up in Florida in the first place is that they shrink as they get older. As they shrink, their ability to see out of their cars decreases, until all they can see is the little crescent moon of sky between the dashboard and the top of their steering wheel -- this is also the primary cause of the so-called "ghost car effect", where a car appears to drive itself; the secondary cause, as any idiot knows, is Google. When this happens, all they can see is birds, and since birds are migratory, the old people end up going South as well, and end up in Florida (West of the Rocky Mountains, they end up in Arizona).
-- Terry
and I hope somebody calls it.
Politicians. They're the same world over.
As much as I object to Tories I felt the need to FTFY.
My gran used to say "Son, the problem with politics in this country is that only politicians get into it."
Sorry, you're wrong.
That's what they want you to think.
Your Gran was part of the conspiracy.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Yep, that's the weasel language they use to sidestep the fact that they failed to take the fuckin' puck and skate towards the goal...
UN observers should be sent to Canada. While they're there, they can throw big sacks of wheat off the backs of trucks and hand out bottled water.
Haha, only serious.
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind." --- Thomas Jefferson to Carey, 1816
Doesn't sound like he's a big fan of Religion being a part of government, does he?
You're right about me not being well read in the Scriptures. However, I didn't say the BIBLE was urging these evangelicals to believe this stuff; i don't know where it comes from. Just flipping through cable TV shows and hearing all these "preachers" yell (I guess this is something, that if you truly believe in, can't be talked about quietly) about being prepared for the Rapture makes me wonder; what happens when the Rapture doesn't come?
Remember that guy last year who predicted the Rapture was coming in May? Then when it didn't he said it was in October? Well he and his followers sure did a lot of preparing for it. They probably knew Christan Scripture a lot better than you do, hell their lives depended on it! (I'm sure if you doubt me you could track them down and ask them, they're no longer so famous so they'll have time to talk to a true Christian believer).
I don't know where you fall on the spectrum of belief (well maybe it'll happen tomorrow but I'll still do my homework) if you believe in the old testament, the new testament or something else (Mormonism? Scientology?) but the very fact that you think this way in the 21st century (that's 2000 years and counting that you've been waiting) makes me worried that you might be getting a little impatient and want to hurry things up.
King Harper of the Republican Party of Canada. Christ what an asshole.
I'll take a thousand!!!
Engage your brain for a minute. We're not talking about 2 or 3 ridings. The National Post (!) is currently reporting at least 14 ridings were robo-called, and the reality is that if you're going to use an illegal tactic and risk the shitstorm that is currently brewing, you don't fuck around with one or two ridings, you do the dirty in every race that's close enough for the tactic to make the difference. That's the problem. The larger, philosophical problem (that transcends politics) is this: how can you trust a government that would cheat on a massive scale to get elected, whatever colour their lawn sign?
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
Even if they lost all 14 of these narrowly contested ridings
if (and keeping in mind that we're discussing a matter still under investigation and far from someone being found guilty in a court of law) it turns out that the government was complicit in this sort of vote fraud, it would be my deepest hope that at least some portion of the Conservative MPs would find enough ethical sense to step away from their party and cross the floor or act as independents. That would be the thing an hounorable MP would do. It would be nice to see my faith in people upheld.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Sadly, too few people remember anymore that poll taxes (or anything amounting to the same thing) are illegal in the US.
Unfortunately some of the people who have forgotten are those who pushed the conversion to all mail-in voting, with postage required by the voter. Sure, it's a small tax, but it's going up almost every year, will matter for some group of people, and is a speed-bump in the road to voting.
...with only 39% of the popular vote.
That's the beauty of not having a two-party system. The winning party almost never gets anything close to a majority. Of course this is close to what happened in the US in 1992 when Ross Perot drew enough Republican votes to allow Clinton to slip in with a whopping 42% of the popular vote.
And then this happened.
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
What is that supposed to mean? The government still stands, and Nixon is dead. "Illegitimate" means nothing when nobody stands up for/to the law.
Is it wrong to steal bread to feed your family? Sometimes a method, no matter how reprehensible it may seem, may be justified in order to prevent a great tragedy. The reason for this trickery was to prevent the public from making a big mistake and voting the wrong party in. Any reasonable person can see that sometimes things like this are necessary to keep Canada working right in the end.
Nothing new here: the major parties all have their voter fraud operations. The NDP in BC fought for the right of folks without identification to vote by "affirming" their supposed identity. Election day they were giving people sandwiches and other treats and driving them to polling stations. The Liberals were notorious in some ridings for offering opposition supporters rides to the polls claiming they were representatives of the Cons or NDP then not showing up. Provincial elections in Quebec have their own special shenanigans that with a long and glorious history. Claiming this makes the legitimacy of the current government an issue is overstating the case at best. Readers should be aware that there is a long history of majority governments in Canada with less than 50% of the vote, including most postwar Liberal administrations. Some people believe the Cons to be the first to achieve that feat but they are showing their ignorance.
Postage is not "required". You can drop off your ballot in person at any number of official collection places or at the elections department.
Here is a link to one of the recorded robocalls: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/1221254309/ID=1917988496
Before audio was made available, the Conservative spin team was saying that it was an administrative error and that they were trying to help people find their polling station but they incorrectly crosslinked some postal codes. When the audio became available, clearly and fraudulently stating that the call was from "Elections Canada" they started playing dumb.
It doesn't matter. This should have never been done and it was it shows us what the gov is really about which is they can't be trusted to govern Canada in the best interest of Canadians. Look at the opposition to bill C-11, C-30 and how the gov just doesn't give a flying fuck about the consequences of these bills.
A gov official named Vic Toews calling Canadians opposed to the bill paedophile sympathisers has no respect for Canadian citizens.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Not so much a merger as a hostile and fraudulent takeover engineered from the top. I was a member of the Progressive Conservative party at the time and every vote taken on the topic of the so-called Alliance (an alliance of the former Reform Party with nothing whatsoever, apart from itself) the result was nearly 100% against any discussions whatsoever on any subject. They were recognized as radical right-wing kooks and rightly shunned. Whatever its shortcomings, the old PC party's members were often highly intelligent, respected democracy and despised corruption. Such a party would accommodate corporate interests but stopped short of completely selling out the country for personal gain. EX PM Mulroney's despicable government in a way set the present events in motion by ruining the PC party's reputation.
Nobody is coming. YOU have to fix it. YOU have to RAISE HELL.
Why do hard left and hard right zealots always take the stance that their party is angelic in comparison to their major rival? Do any of you remember the Sponsorship scandal? How about the red book and its broken promises? What about a Prime Minister whose family company had its headquarters based out of the Barbados so that it could avoid Canadian taxes? How about a party that put a 'pirate tax' on all digital media, regardless how you were going to use that media? Or a still sitting MP from Vancouver Centre whom, over the past 10 years, has made enough crazy comments to make Stockwell Day seems sane in comparison? Every party elected to power does stupid things and because of this, no party will put in place the laws necessary to ensure the right people serve jailtime when their actions are exposed. Furthermore, the person at the top rarely has a clue that it's going on until after the action has taken place and has been exposed by the media or the opposition. There's not enough time in the day to keep track of even a handful of subordinate MP's while running a country, and those MP's are not going to communicate everything they've done. Likewise, senior bureaucrats are taking the same stance with the MP that holds their portfolio. To think this is going to change is to be idealistically naive.
All that whining about terrorism while all that right wing election stealing machinery moves North.
"Let's say you're present governor of Illinois and you're in a room with a former governor of Illinois on your right and a former governor of Illinois on your left. Chances are the room you're in is jail."
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Right about now, I think you'd get about 5 million people raising their hands.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Love to listen to the left wing wackos whine about how they were shellacked by the Conservatives. Waa Waa Waa!
The Conservative Party was not involved in this action. Neither it seems was the company used by the Conservative Party. All you had to do was read the story in the National Post. In fact, the post could be seen as an attempt to mislead Canadians with reference to the Conservative Party!!!
Scams are easy, but unless you're tied into some international money laundering it gets hard to go from scam to money in the bank without a trace. That's the tricky part!
Of course they don't. The conservatives are like a kid with a christmas list they've been writing for 9 years, with an ever expanding list of things they wanted done, that they couldn't do as an opposition party or as a minority. Now that they're in charge it's time to reward all the party faithful for the last 9 + years (more than that for those in the precursor parties) with all of the things they've been pushing for. It doesn't matter if the idea is 10 years out of date, completely invalid, useless, a waste of money or anything else. They're finally in charge, and all of the things they wanted to do, more prisons, ditch the gun registry, ditch kyoto, massively expand the navy, drill drill drill (or however you want to describe the oilsands), etc etc etc.
Unfortunately some of the people who have forgotten are those who pushed the conversion to all mail-in voting, with postage required by the voter. Sure, it's a small tax, but it's going up almost every year, will matter for some group of people, and is a speed-bump in the road to voting.
Absentee ballots require no postage. The catch is that you must drop it off at a post office.
In Canada mail to and from Members of Parliament and other key government official are completely postage free. You can drop the mail off at any mailbox. So it's a natural extension that all ballots are postage free as well. I'm extremely surprised to discover that this is not the case in US. You must pay the government in order to contact the government by mail? Huh?
Making all political mail and ballots postage free (without going through the post office) is probably pocket change to the USPS.
Jebus, I guess this is another source of info I need to drop to get away from uninformed, biased opinions. Some fat idiot (who, by the way, looks pretty much like I imagine the average Slashdotter) possibly carries out some shady election activities and the entire governing party is groundlessly smeared in this submission. Fuck you lefties can't stand losing by the rules. And BTW, the article clearly states "There is no evidence that Harper’s campaign or any of the other candidates were involved in the calls." Oh, but of course you wouldn't want to actually read the article once you think you've finally found the political smoking gun you so desperately want to find because, you know, your political views are "right" and theirs are "wrong". Honesty isn't that important because you need to get rid of those bastards at *any* cost.
For the record, the Harper government has a majority, not a "majority". And 39% of the popular vote is actually a decent mandate in our electoral system, it's not "only" 39% you fucking left wing tie-dyed beret wearing sprout eater. Timothy's always been a jerk-off in my Slashdot experience, but this is over the top even for him. Hey Timmy, remember when your guys got caught accepting envelopes of cash and such in the adscam controversy that brought down your preferred government? But of course that was a long time ago. Oops, no, that was the last governing Liberal party. Keep grasping for phony shit on the Conservatives, I'm sure you'll hit something accurate eventually just by dumb luck.
By the way, I'm not a particular fan of any political party, I think they're all douches. But it's laughable how low people's scruples become when they know they're "right" and the other guys are "wrong".
No, but at least one member of the party has already fallen on his sword (resigned) over this.
Now how far something goes to be a "party" issue VS "members of the party" I don't know, but if somebody is resigning over the issue you can pretty much put the ball in that court.
spreading these lies pretending to be form the other party makes it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_propaganda
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
People are fickle and irrational. If any of my relatives (on one specific side of the family...) got a 2am call from a political party they were going to vote for, I'm pretty sure they would either change their vote or not vote at all. And any who didn't would surely believe the moved voting booth story and probably get frustrated and go home when they couldn't find it.
Wasn't there a time that when you referred to the Governer's Wing of a State Institution, you were talking about a hospital?
People who think a vote every four years [after a majority] is a democracy does not understand democracy. Since the last election debate has been cut off MANY times. The claim is 'mandate' from the last election [majority] and that, as they say, is that. Next Bill!
Canada's downfall will be due to their own undoing---and thier elected officials are to blame.
In only a few decades, Canada has gone down the crapper, from a human rights perspective. I guess they learned a great deal from their firends to the south.
While it is easy to point to the Conservatives as the culprit, it is not out of the realm of possibility that some other clandestine organization did this to ensure a Conservative majority and thus being favourable to their causes. Is it not possible that one or more industry that didn't want another minority government or worst a non-conservative government in power? Hypothetically, would not the oil sands have an easier time with the Conservatives in power?
If a smoking gun is found, it may not lead to Steven Harper and the Conservatives even though they may be have been the beneficiaries.
hard time believing someone from a Conservative party would do such a thing. If it said Liberal....they cheat all the time in elections. In the US, it is a given that they cheat. like "finding" more votes in a trunk of a car, or paying people to vote.
Conservatives Mislead Voters
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Oh my, a scandal for the Canadian Conservative Party (equivalent to US Republicans, though far more liberal since Canada's populace is far more liberal than America's)!
I wonder how the (liberal) news media is gonna handle this? Well of course wall-to-wall, 24-hour coverage that keeps hammering the point home: Conservatives stole the election! It's almost like the Liberal Party has its own media wing.
This is no different than from here in the US, where the 500 million dollar loss for the US Government with its Solyndra involvement got lukewarm coverage at best. Why? Because the liberal media don't go after their own. If it had been Bush in charge when Solyndra happened, we'd still be hearing about it day-in and day-out.
I predict you'll be hearing about the robocall "scandal" in Canada for as long as it takes the Liberals to win back their majority. The liberal media lackeys will do their work and then move on to the next assignment.
Wow, so the truth starts to come out. Would be nice to see if "anonymous" can dig up some evidence. This stuff might be the turning point where the general public might start to actually do something about who runs our country. I can't complain much since I decided not to vote on the last election since I couldn't decide who was the lesser evil. They are all corrupt to some degree, its human nature.
Lies and subterfuge are the only way that Republicans operate. They are allergic to truth and ethics.
Judging from my readings on World War II, such deliberate attempts by "conservatives" to sabotage democracy would once have had severe repercussions.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Deceive, decoy, deny -- you win elections first, and then worry about the fallout from your tactics after the election, when you are in a better position to deal with it. Can't say I'm surprised that our northern neighbors engage in the same kind of election hijinks that have plagued our plebiscites. When we get reports of dead voters casting ballots in their elections, this might become interesting.
And it failed, completely and utterly.
I know, I know, alarmist title and slightly OT contents, sorry about that. But, ...
Shouldn't this tell us that democracy doesn't really work? I am not sure if it can work at all - I hope it can, but as far as I can see, it can only work if all participants are in complete agreement that not only the letter, but the spirit, of the rules has to be followed absolutely. If only there were a way to ensure that only people who had great personal integrity and were highly competent could run for office.