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Misleading Robocalls Went To Voters ID'd As Non-Tories
silentbrad writes "An investigation by CBC News has turned up voters all over Canada who say the reason they got robocalls sending them to fictitious polling stations was that they'd revealed they would not vote Conservative. Although the Conservative Party has denied any involvement in the calls, these new details suggest that the misleading calls relied on data gathered by, and carefully guarded by, the Conservative Party. Known as 'CIMS,' the database assigns a 'smiley' face to supporters, and a 'sad' face to non-Conservatives. Liberal and NDP politicians say it would make no sense to call randomly, since many of the voters misled would be Conservatives."
And so is the liberal party ... Hell even communism has plenty of rich supporters (In my experience rich capitalists are much more likely to be communist than poor ones, like 1% versus 0.01%).
It would be hard for any present-day political movement to be different, really. This would probably have existed where sovereign states had manageable numbers and large participation, and very limited immigration or mobility. Like in ancient Athens where everybody who possibly could was at least 50% a politician. But I'm sure you see that a political party in a country of tens of millions of people needs powerful intrests, even to just announce it's existence to a significant fraction of the population. Add to that that most people, libertarian or liberal or conservative have zero knowledge of the actual ideas their party supposedly defends (supposedly because the liberals are about as liberal as conservatives are conservative), even just what they entail. When it comes to the history and probable effects of a political theory, heh. Good luck finding anyone who even knows.
It's actually worse than that : people will literally defend lies over documented history, an obvious case of this would be the fact that it is democrats/progressives that historically first were pro-slavery then spawned the ku-klux clan, and then became pro-segregation (an evolution that grudgingly and extremely slowly happened under extreme republican pressure. Al Gore started his career defending segregation), and that democrats have always been the party of the rich, not the poor. Although similar misconceptions exist of the republican party (e.g. anyone claiming they represent the intrests of the church urgenly needs to read a history book).
The tiny parties, like communists or (one of the many kinds of) anarchists, and to a much lesser degree the libertarians. At least they know what their party actually tries to accomplish. Good luck finding a democrat or republican voter that knows the meat of the party's position, even on well-known topics, beyond the soundbites on the news. Smaller parties have better informed members. That also seems to me the primary reason for their very limited numbers.
I for one fear what will happen when politicians realize the obvious : that facebook/google ads is a bigger political influence than any string of debates ever will be. Sadly the first person to really realize that is Silvio Berlusconi. Read up on him, cause he will be the inspiration for a large number of future American presidents.
Your point ?