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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.
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Solution: Ban all robocalls and livecalls for election purposes! I am sure that Canadian would benefit from this.
American mainstream news generally doesn't give a shit about international events unless it involves celebrities, celebrities dying, normal people dying en masse, or distant places that the government claims to be warring with or policing. Canadian politics simply aren't worth column inches, unless it directly affects the States or the media's ability to follow a story.
There are lots of tricks. Another good one was allegedly used to advantage GW in his first presidential election in Florida - manipulating polling booth allocations. Districts likely to vote democratic were given insufficient polling stations, resulting in around-the-block queues and long journeys to discourage voters. Nothing was really shown conclusively though, as in this case deliberately trying to influence the outcome would be indistinguishable from plain old screw-the-poor-districts mismanagement.
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".
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.
Canadians don't vote for parties, they vote them out.
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.
The fine on the books for this kind of thing is a mere $5000. Just a cost of doing business for the corrupt cons.
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.
Not just jail time. Make them pay for the cost. All of it. Re-run the election in constituencies where this happened, and make the culprits pay the cost. And time & travel expenses for those who spent time driving about to the wrong places. $60 an hour and $0.50 per mile sounds fair to me.
Unless and until there is a conviction of who did this, no sanctions can be made against them (assuming Canada still operates as fairly as the USA used to). OTOH, it would only take proof that it happened (without knowing who did it) to invalidate the election, since it resulted in many people being unable to vote. But it seems it was at least narrowed down to a robocaller company.
If the Conservative Party of Canada actually sanctioned this, they they should be decertified as a party (for at least 10 years). I doubt they would be that stupid. But maybe some higher-ups in the party did it. They should be imprisoned, if convicted. 10 years might be enough.
There still may need to be a complete nullification of the laws passed, or at least a re-vote on them all with the correct members voting (after hearing again, all the debates). This depends on proof this happened. If this is all a news media lie, then never mind.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Hell, it's even better. Here we have some guys caught, apparently, and they will hopefully get punished - but will they redo elections in the affected districts? If not, then it seems like you cheat, get caught and still get to run the country...
Want to bet that for some odd reason suddenly the same people who clamor for total surveillance now cry bloody murder if said surveillance backfires?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Solution: When you go to vote against a Conservative, make sure you know where your polling place is. even if you have to call the local election commission and if you get a call in the middle of the night, tell them to go fuck themselves, eh?
If it's not close, it's a lot harder to cheat. So don't let it be close. Talk to your friends. Ridicule anyone who says they're going to vote conservative. And as at least one wife of a Virginia senator has done, if your husband says he's going to vote the wrong way, hand him a tissue and tell him to go sleep on the couch.
If that doesn't work, don't waste any time: Go straight to general strikes and boycotts and civil disobedience. It works if you work it.
You are welcome on my lawn.