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."

Comments

Baseless?

[neokushan]

Sounds like there's a lot of evidence to the contrary. At some point, it just stops being a coincidence.

Re:Baseless?

[msobkow]

That's my biggest worry. That at the end of it, even with evidence pointing specifically to the Conservatives, that they'll get away with some wrist-slap fine and letting go a couple of people to be sacrificed to the court wolves.

But I can tell you this: The Harper government will not let go of power without fighting through every possible appeal in the courts that they can, even if this investigation doesn't take longer than their term of office. Mindless political party animal that it is, it's equivalent to the survival instinct is the instinct to seek power. Power is the food of the political animal, money is just the handler's proffered carrots.

There have to be more severe penalties for this kind of blatant interference with the government and electoral processes. In light of the Conservatives previous conviction for funding fraud which is what led to an election in the first place, I posit that the Conservatives should be stripped not only of office, but of their federal party status, officially and permanently disbanded.

We neither need nor want the Canadian Reform Alliance Party under any banner or name.

Re:Baseless?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're absolutely clueless about left or right. The US has a right-wing party, and an ultra right-wing party. Both are made up of corrupted corporatists, which in the rest of the world probably would be called by their right name: Fascists.

Re:Baseless?

[squiggleslash]

Pretty much all of them with the kinda-sorta exception of MSNBC, which pretends to be liberal but nobody - left or right - takes remotely seriously anyway.

Sorry dude, but the whole "The media is liberal" whine became more or less ridiculous during the 1990s All Clinton's Penis All The Time stuff, followed by sixish years of "How Dare Your Critificate Our Glorious Leader President Bush", until Katrina when even some Fox News journalists started to find it difficult to carry on pretending the man was anything other than utterly incompetent.

The only reason you think CNN et al are "liberal" are because you watch a network that insists the rest of the networks are "liberal" and that it, somehow, is the exception. C'mon, you're still pretending Obama is most liberal president in history, despite the fact he's continued virtually all the far right policies of the last guy, has a cabinet with a large number of Republicans in it, refused to support any Health Care Reform proposal unless it originated with the Republicans themselves, has done none of the things you pretended he'd do when he got into office, and has a consistent record of refusing to do the right thing if he thinks the Tea Party will throw a fit with one or two tiny, insignificant, exceptions (oh wow, he caught up with the rest of the country and allowed gay people to serve their country. Whoopie doo.)

Realistically, the closest thing liberals have to a voice in the media right now, with the exception of the "I know they're telling me what I want to hear solely for marketing reasons" MSNBC crap, is a fucking comedian. Great. That's our voice in the media. A clown.

But, hey, carry on whining.

Re:Whatever happened in Ohio?

[ohnocitizen]

If you don't understand how requiring picture id suppresses voters who have other forms of id, then yeah, you don't get it. Voter Fraud in the US is a myth (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/opinion/the-myth-of-voter-fraud.html). What we are left with is populations of people (students, the poor) who typically vote Democrat, and have trouble getting through the hoops Republicans enjoy throwing in their place. So yes, these laws are indeed an assault on voting rights.

Re:Well, isn't that interesting.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

You should maintain a healthy skepticism of ALL politicians and those who cling to them.

Indeed. And part of that healthy skepticism is recognizing that while all political parties are inherently brutal and corrupt, they are not equally so; some are, in fact, markedly worse than others. The "oh, forget about it, they're all the same" attitude that a lot of people take is intellectual laziness which, if enough people adopt it, paves the road to power for real monsters.

Re:Canada is just as corrupt - or even more so

[Barbara, not Barbie]

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