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Database and IP Records Tie Election Fraud To Canada's Ruling Conservatives
choongiri writes "Canada's election fraud scandal continues to unfold. Elections Canada just matched the IP address used to set up thousands of voter suppression robocalls to one used by a Conservative Party operative, and a comparison of call records found a perfect match between the illegal calls, and records of non-supporters in the Conservative Party's CIMS voter tracking database, as well as evidence access logs may have been tampered with. Meanwhile, legal challenges to election results are underway in seven ridings, and an online petition calling for an independent public inquiry into the crisis has amassed over 44,000 signatures. The Conservative Party still maintains their innocence, calling it a baseless smear campaign."
Sounds like there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. At some point, it just stops being a coincidence.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I'm surprised to see this kinda thing happening to our neighbors to the north. Compared to the cesspool that is American politics, I thought Canadian politics were squeaky clean. That's why I've always thought it would be a good place to run to (as James Cameron has evidently decided) in case the far right kooks took over.
Speaking of which, what ever happened to the investigations into Diebold and the voting machines in Ohio (and maybe more states)? Wasn't there enough evidence to start a criminal investigation? Or did it just fizzle because nobody cared?
Where's the outrage?
The Conservatives engage in massive election fraud, while their co-ideologues south of the border, the Republicans, make political hay with completely baseless complaints of widespread voter fraud. If I were a suspicious, conspiracy-minded sort, I might think there was some sort of connection. "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain." But surely this kind of thing is just a coincidence ... right?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Canada's conservatives are becoming a lot more like American republicans. Now, they simply need to share information to see how to cheat at it better.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I am glad Canada is able to confront their voting manipulation, unlike Russia and the USA.
Watch as the "mainstream media" twists itself into knots trying to avoid stating what everyone knows: The Tories broke the law, and arguably stole at a least a couple of seats. And given the penchant for micromanaging there's no way the Prime Minister didn't know about it.
Three Squirrels
What really surprised me is that the conservatives don't even try to hide that they are compiling a database of their supporters and rejecters. This goes against the very idea of secret ballot voting, and in most civilised countries is at least theoretically illegal.
Perhaps, but I've yet to see news of such a conspiracy from the liberal side. It is healthy to treat both sides with a fair amount of skepticism, but don't let the news of one side openly committing fraud turn into a belief that the other is automatically guilty of the same.
Innocent until proven guilty, and all that.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Right-wingers tend to exhibit much stronger religious fervour than moderates or left wingers. And as "doing gods work" trumps national laws they're more likely to break them. It's much the same situation as pre-reformation Europe, national leaders are treating the laws of their country as secondary to whatever they think god is telling them to do. Which means we're due another reformation, like it or not, and a whole bunch more religion based violence and suppression. Woop-de-doo.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
I'd like to think that the solution to this sort of thing (voting fraud) could be effectively combatted by making the penalties really severe, like a multi-decade stay in prison. I feel that the consequences are serious enough, after all the BASIC premise of our DEMOCRACY is at stake; one person one vote. I mean how many nations do we despise, condemn or even sanction for not allowing this basic right regardless of how much it has been perverted or corrupted by practices like buying votes or dirty politics. Even when "the people" make stupid mistakes REPEATEDLY (Bush 2000, 2004), we allow them that right.
So denying that right should be treated very very seriously. If, in fact, the criminal act was carried out by a single or few individuals then fine, a long prison term should discourage others. Otherwise, in the best of worlds, a plea bargain will be made in which they'll finger the real perpetrators; the big fish who are doing this systematically and on a large scale. THEY should be prosecuted and sent to prison for a long long time.
Unfortunately the reason why I said "in the best of worlds" is because some of these individuals may be motivated by a higher calling (and not just by the reward of public office or money). If they truly believe that what they are doing serves some sort of meta-physical goal, their beliefs may cause them to act without fear of earthly punishments. Suicide bombers, to take an extreme example, are unlikely to be dissuaded by even the death penalty. This is just another way in which extremism destroys what most people would call civilization and would return us to the pious but desperately impoverished middle ages.
The problem is more complicated than you make it appear. Quebec has one of the lowest per-capita incomes in all of continental North America - and that's before you add the highest taxes in the world.
So a level of tuition fees that would be affordable anywhere else is going to have a severe impact, because affordability is related directly to after-tax income.
It's true that much of this damage is self-inflicted - Montreal used to be the head-office capital of Canada, but 50 years of language laws (started in 1969, before the Parti Quebecois came to power in the '70s), the resulting migration of almost a million people from Quebec to the Rest of Canada in just a few short years, and the willingness of politicians of all political stripes to play the game and suck up to Quebec Nationalists when votes are at stake are also part of the problem.
It's in the country's best interest that Quebecers get as much education as possible, not just for the same reasonas as anyone else, but also because a more educated workforce is more likely to have to look elsewhere (the rest of Canada) for jobs because they won't be able to use their skills at home.
The dissatisfaction this generates towards the nationalistic/separatist policies of Quebec among French-Quebecers is the REAL reason that the Quebec government doesn't want to increase the level of education - the less education, the less likely you are to leave the province, so the more likely you are to be vulnerable to exploitation by both government and industry (those highest taxes in the world and those lowest after-tax wages in North America).
It's also why the Quebec government made it illegal for French-Quebecers to send their kids to English schools - it reduces the ability of people to look outside the province for jobs, creating a captive labour pool. We saw this in the nurse's strike in the '90s - the nurses had the backing of the public, but the government knew that the majority of nurses, not being able to pass proficiency tests in English to work in another province or another country, would have to settle for crappy work conditions and lower wages than their more mobile counterparts in other provinces.
Historically, this is not new. The US started it the better part of a century ago; US-funded Quebec industries were notorious for treating the french as cheap labour worthy only of exploitation. The only difference is, with a policy of "maitre chez nous" ("master of our house"), it's the political elite (at the rovincial level in Quebec and the Liberal, Conservative, and NDP politicians at the federal level) who do the exploiting now, always saying stuff that appeases enough of the nationalist/separatist faction to get votes, while at the same time giving them legitimacy.
Whether it was Mulroney, Chretien, or Harper, none of them were willing to engage in realpolitik and call the Quebec provincial and Montreal municipal governments corrupt, because they always wanted enough of those "soft nationalist" votes to hold onto power (and because they too were corrupted).
The solution is complicated.
First, Canadians are going to have to reject any more willingness to compromise with anyone who wants to break up the country. Second, get rid of all the hypenated-Canadian talk. We're all just Canadians, not French-Canadians, English-Canadians, Whatever-Canadians. Labels are used by manipulative scoundrels of all political stripes to divide people, highlighting the unimportant differences rather than the important commonality. In other words, kill off multi-culturalism. Multi-culturalism legitimized Quebec nationalism.
Second, the whole country needs to realize that bilingualism is a "good thing." Not only does it help delay the onset of Alzheimers by exercising the brain more, it also helps the country be more competitive internationally, and communicate better internally. Quebec would have to go from being officially french to officially bilingual, same as New Brunswick. Other provinces sh
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
All your links are, in two words matching your tone, FUCKING IRRELEVANT. Because those are for AMERICAN incidents.
Despite GP forgetting to capitalize the "L" in Liberal, by context the GP and GGP posts were obviously referring to the Liberal Party of Canada (there is no major US federal party called Liberal), and *specifically* incidents of voter suppression tactics in our last election.
There were cases of Liberal-backed robocalls during the election that were violated Elections Canada rules, in that they failed to identify the party that the call represented. That is a fucking far cry from claiming to be Elections Canada and misdirecting known non-Conservative voters to non-existent voting stations.