Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Robocall and More Human Election Cheating

Just when you think Harper has driven this country into an impermeable depth of political sleaze, we get more proof that has done it again in at least providing the attitude that is making this current election telephone expose possible.

Now CBC Radio's The Current has an interview today with a call center interview who was forced to make these kind of calls (the audio file will available later on their website), and reports of specific Conservative party supplied scripts for live callers on top of the robocalls are coming to light. All the Conservatives are doing is trying to belittle the whole accusations, saying to take them and any proof to Elections Canada, have one Tory claim to have faced the same voter suppression scam in his election to confuse the matter and throw one junior employee out as a scapegoat.

And yet, Chantal Hébert of the Toronto Star does have a good point that for a voter suppression scam, this one was wasn't efficiently systematic at all.  For instance, some the of the ridings affected were safe Tory ones like Wellington-Halton Hills and Simcoe-Grey whose Conservative candidates won by wide margins. It stands to reason that if there was a nationwide effort to make this scheme work, there would be a more focused effort to hit the vulnerable ridings. 

At the same time, such a pattern would be a big smoking gun that would be a killer scoop for any news bureau and a political howitzer for the Opposition that could conceivably cause the house to fall. So, the whole situation could be either a lot of cheaters acting on their own for this kind of scam, "encouraged" or otherwise, or a really subtle coordinated scheme more concerned with deniability than effectiveness. Either way, Elections Canada has a lot of check out and there should be a public inquiry about this before more people are turned off by elections more than they are now.

By contrast, Bob Rae apologizing for the Vikileaks employee he tossed out was a class act, even if that activist didn't do anything illegal; court records are public for anyone to see.  It's certain better behaviour than Toews ever has.


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