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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."
Phonecalls?
A list who voted what??
How?
The Conservative party is the party representing the interests of powerful people who wish their interests to be represented in law (*). It is in the interests such people to have such a party in power. It is a logical consequence that they will use any means possible to get this party into power.
Owen Jones said of the granddaddy English Conservative Party, quoting a speaker at his college: "What you have to realise about the Conservative party is that it is a coalition of privileged interests. Its main purpose is to defend that privilege. And the way it wins elections is by giving just enough to just enough other people."
(*) Contrast e.g. philosophical libertarians who in principle (at least) will not want the government to give them special favours.
Hurrah for democracy!
It was a coincidence and nothing more!
Listing the wrong date seems to be a favorite tactic of misleading American robocalls. There was some legislation recently introduced to specifically tackle it, but it's probably illegal under existing laws as well. The main game seems to be whether, as here, political parties can feed the data to "third party" callers without it getting traced back to them.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
None of the parties are really getting away looking too great lately. The NDP has basically had to admit one of their politicians leaked damaging personal information about Toews, the Liberals are .. well the liberals, but their last leader didn't do them any favours with his here again, back to america tomorrow antics.
For just once I wish these guys could stop slinging mud and do something productive, but this is politics we're talking about.
Maybe the conservative party is behind this, maybe not... but does it really matter?
Let's go with the assumption that someone high up in the party organization is to blame. How many people knew about this tactic being employed? Three? Five? Seven? How many people are employed by the party? Three hundred? Five hundred? Seven hundred? How many people voted for them? Twenty million? (I really have no idea, actually. But the point is, we're talking about many, many orders of magnitude in difference here)
So, if we find out that a handful of corrupted people employed a dirty tactic, what should follow? Sure, let's convict those guys but after that... Should everyone stop voting for the party they felt to represent them the best, because of a couple of bad apples? As disgusting as this tactic was, I have hard time seeing how "Yes" would be a reasonable response. If the answer is "No", we end up saying "It doesn't matter whether the conservative party is responsible or not".
Maybe we get some public discourse about what kind of data you should be allowed to keep in a database but... meh.
WGAF?
Prior to elections in Canada you receive a document from the government telling you where you will vote and contact information should you have questions or issues. You are instructed to keep it in a safe place and even bring it with you to the polling station. That said, this list of voters is pure gold. Nigerian or other scammers would probably pony up some serious coin for hundreds (thousands?) of names of people void of common sense and who will believe anything a phone caller tells them. Our local NDP member of parliment has been doing much hand wringing over the fact that these poor people where so deceived and someone's gunna' pay... blah, blah, blah. But I see no wringing of hands of how folks seem to have abandoned the notion of being self reliant, responsible, skeptical or just admitting they got duped because they are chumps. You've got your tempest and your teapot. Nothing to see here.
"Should everyone stop voting for the party they felt to represent them the best, because of a couple of bad apples?
Canada is not the USA, we have more than two parties. We have dozens of parties! Are you so ideologically blind as to vote for one party, even if you know they are corrupt and do not represent your best interests as a tax paying citizen? Really? Are you that cynical? Because if so, that is incredibly sad. We deserve the best government money can buy. If there is corruption, it should be routed out. If a party is rotten, it's leader should resign. If the Prime Minister can no longer guarantee he/she has the trust of the citizenry, a confidence vote should be called. We have many options in our democracy, we do not have to accept corruption, lies, deception.
Don't tell them who you're going to vote for. They have no right to know.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
I can't believe that the Cons could possibly think they'd get away with such a plan. I could believe that the Libs would find it useful to give up a few votes in order to make the Cons look like cheats. That seems a hell of a lot more plausible to me. FWIW, I'm not Canadian, and I'm strongly independent in any case.
Many people don't understand how serious this issue is, including many of my fellow Canucks, friends, and family.
Several of the ridings which the Harper "government" won were very closely contested and were victimized by these robocalls directing people to non-existent polling stations. Whether they were smart enough to realize it was fraud, checked it out with Elections Canada, or were actually duped by the calls is irrelevant.
It was illegal for anyone to try to interfere with the vote in this fashion. The fact that there was interference invalidates the results in the affected ridings.
That means that there are more ridings that need to be re-elected than the Harpercrites had "won" to achieve their "majority." The quotes are because the only people who believe they have a legitimate majority any more are die-hard Conservatives who refuse to accept their party was involved despite the increasing evidence that not only were they responsible, but the how of the crime is being dismantled as well by investigators.
This is a serious, serious threat to the very foundation of democracy in Canada.
If the Harper "government" is allowed to continue in power after this kind of blatant vote interference, Canada will have allowed itself to be taken over by an organization using tactics no more ethical than that of any totalitarian regime or banana republic. This is as bad as or worse than the "votes" in the Ukraine and Russia, which are perpetually questioned by the entire world.
Yet sickeningly enough, it's our own Canadian observers who are requested to go and monitor elections in countries like Ukraine and Russia and to report on them.
The Elections Canada investigation is moving along as quickly as it can. While I wish it were moving faster, my one fervent hope is that they start tagging ridings as invalid and pulling the "elected officials" from power in those ridings, regardless of who is behind the calls.
That's the key point: I don't care who is behind the calls. The identity of the person, persons, organizations, companies, foreign interests, or political parties who were behind the calls does not really matter to me all that much. What matters is that the election results in those ridings are invalid and the seat-holders can not be allowed to remain in power without a re-election in those ridings. Not if Canada is to be able to continue to claim to be a "democratic" country instead of one where electoral fraud and interference are shrugged off as being "normal."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
...and repeal all laws passed by the Republican, er, PC party since they came to power, and forbid them from acting in any capacity in Canadian government for the next 20 years as punishment for their gross malfeasance and betrayal of trust.
This will never happen, but one can dream.
"The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." -- George Bernard Shaw
Contact the Governor General and demand he dissolves Parliament and call new elections.
These Conservatives (party of "Law & Order") have committed several counts of election fraud (In & Out and much more).
Fascinating how they love to claim something along the lines of, "Libruls got a speeding ticket, we committed election fraud, everyone's the same". Like speeders & murderers are somehow equivalent in their law breaking.
We kind of saw it comming in Quebec, and it was one of the main reason we (and I) sacrificed the Bloc Quebecois in favour of the NPD, so we could actually have a strong government that represent the overall values of the canadian people. The result of these tactics is that separatism is now seen no more as an economic perspective than a difference in belonging. Separatist parties have seen a recent raise in interest here province-wise. As recently reported on television (Radio-Canada), it was said by journalist, that at one point in canada elections where re-done eleven times. It will be interesting to see what kind of argument Harper's party come up to put aside the law. Remember that in every other sphere of life, if you get caught cheating there are consequences. If the values put forward by this party are that they are above the law, then I guess we should do the same, remember caporal Lortie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Lortie) It can happen again !
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 ?
Globe & Mail article about former chief of staff to Harper calling for investigation.
Don't forget, write the Governor General and demand Parliament be dissolved until new election has been held.
I guess the point could be restated by contrasting with what the Conservative party is/was not.
Old Labour was in no way the party of the rich elite. Old Labour brought about Legal Aid, the National Health Service, needs-based allowances and a massive programme of nationalisation of industry. The country had the unique position of suffering vicious wounds of war without having been occupied or made an invalid. The people believed that a society comprises the sum of inputs of all its members, and that a society so cooperating will be successful - so it should look after all its members. It was in much more debt than today, but considered that the answer was more investment to rebuild infrastructure which would pay off in the long term. It worked.
A propaganda campaign since the '70s has turned the country stupid again, and we've been slowly getting more Conservative since. Blair, as dictator-enabler Thatcher noted, was Thatcherite. What will we see in the future? Will there be a push to classical libertarianism? Will we return to social democracy? All I can say for now is we're well on the journey of the state being the enforcement arm of various mafia corporations who are slowly becoming the majority receiver of HM Treasury funds.
Conservative insiders admit that their database was used. Got it not? Good.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Building on their anti-science agenda, the Harper administration has decided to 'repurpose' the National Research Council to serve the whims of private industry in what amounts to a state sponsored capitalism scheme. NRC had been a very long standing institution in Canada dedicated to research in the pure sciences and engineering.
How do this forward thinking decision come about? The Canadian government decided to investigate why the research stimulus money given to private industry was not showing a good return. They received comments from business owners claiming that the process was too complex, lacked leadership, failed to correctly identify promising companies, etc. From that feedback, they somehow discerned that the solution must be to make NRC the lapdog of private industry. The minister of science and technology envisions "a one-stop, 1-800, 'I have a solution for your business problem' " shop. What I'd like to know is how the fuck this in any way address the original problem of businesses squandering their stimulus money?
The kicker is this - the minister claims to be following the advice of some guy who owns a business software company. How the hell is this person qualified to dictate science and engineering research policy for the country of Canada? Clearly he isn't, but when he says something that happens to align with the ideology of the current government, that's all the justification needed apparently.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/03/06/technology-goodyear-national-research-council.html
It is FREE to send physical mail to the Governor General (and MPs!). Who knows how they weight paper vs. email, but a Canadian postmark makes it way more likely you're a citizen.
http://www.gg.ca/document.aspx?id=325 for the address etc.
Actively subverting a democratic process should be considered treason. It is in essence, an attempt to destroy a government, and should be treated as such. Those found guilty of such activities should be shot or jailed for life.
This story has been floating around the Canadian press for weeks - maybe months now. Slashdot - "olds" for kiddies who don't keep up on the real world.
:( :( :(
Elections Canada released yesterday that most of the "complaints" were outright bullshit/lies/none existent people. I really don't think most of the visitors to Slashdot could give a fuck.
If you got a fraudulent phone call, please send it to Elections Canada.
http://www.elections.ca/commissioner/complaint.aspx?lang=e
The Council of Canadians is also pursuing legal action, so submit it to them next.
http://www.canadians.org/election/survey/index.html
Please include the date of the call and any other information, such as a copy of your cellphone bill showing the date and time of the call. If you have a recorded voicemail, or the Call Display number, this is also really helpful.
I don't know how else to define acting to maliciously interfering with the underpinnings of a functioning democracy. This is one crime that we could benefit being prosecuted more vigorously. Canada, you first.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz