Robocall Scandal

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I eard something along the lines of, 'Canadian conservatives learning dirty tricks from their American counterparts.'

Voter suppression techniques are commonplace in the United States with high-priced consulting firms specializing in sabotaging elections. But I don’t think anybody really expected a Canadian political party to stoop so low that we didn’t take the necessary steps to protect ourselves from it.

This could mean the end of the age of innocence in Canadian electoral campaigns. Elections Canada stated that these phoney phone calls deliberately disrupted the voting process. How is this different from a bunch of goons with clubs blocking the door to a voter station as we’ve seen in Third World countries or the deep south of the United States? Because the net effect is the same: you are sabotaging the ability of people to exercise their democratic right to cast their ballot in a federal election. In my view there can be no more serious crime, nor a more heinous affront to democracy.

Too many brave Canadians died fighting for the right to have fair and clean and free elections in this country to let this go unchallenged at the highest possible order. My father didn’t go to war to fight for democracy only to have some sleazy punk in an American-style black ops department run roughshod over it and undermine its integrity.

Now the boys in the black ops department will call it voter suppression techniques to try and give it some semblance of legitimacy, but in my view there is nothing legitimate about cheating and there never will be. We want the Conservatives to fix health care, not elections. We want the Conservatives to fix pensions, not elections. And we want the Conservatives to fix our crumbling infrastructure, not fix elections. When you consider the millions of dollars of overspending through the in-and-out electoral fraud and now the hundreds of thousands of phoney calls by the Racknine rascals, it makes you wonder about the legitimacy of the Conservatives’ 39% majority mandate. Did they really win that last federal election? Or did they achieve their razor thin majority by cheating?

The public needs to know because there is a serious matter of public interest that far exceeds the success or failure of any one political party. Cheating in an election fuels the cynicism of an already jaded electorate and if the public loses even more confidence in their electoral system, they will be even less likely to come out and vote and the integrity of our system is irreparably harmed. And, in my view, nothing could be more serious.

There were those who tried to say that Watergate was just a couple of snoopy plumbers, but those journalists who pressed on found it was much more than that. I predict the Racknine will become the Conservative party’s Group Action. And I predict that we will find that the sheer magnitude and audacity of the Racknine rascals will be enough to make Richard Nixon blush. And I predict it will hang around the neck of the Prime Minister like an albatross. And I wonder if Justice Gomery is still available because I think we need his services once again if we are going to arrest this serious bastardization of our electoral system.

I say as long as they are using so called "american" electoral tactics let's impeach the prime minister.

It is absolutely disgusting that Harper is probably going to get away with this. I think the only fair outcome would be a brand new election paid for entirely out of the Conservative Party's pocket, and furthermore the impeachment of any MPs known to have been involved in this fraud

I received robocalls in the past election and the previous one, both misleading, trying to either send me to the wrong polling station or directing me to vote for a candidate who had dropped out of the race... the tactic worked for the conservatives two times ago, but last time we booted them out and got the Green Party in, finally!

I say as long as they are using so called "american" electoral tactics let's impeach the prime minister.

Anyone else that received these types of calls in the last election, make sure you report it.

I eard something along the lines of, 'Canadian conservatives learning dirty tricks from their American counterparts.'

That's right. Blame the United States.

ruveyn

That's right. Blame the United States.

ruveyn

That's right. Blame the United States.

ruveyn

If the shoe fits... besides, Republicans do not represent the entirety of the US so nobody is "blaming the United States", merely pointing out the methodological connection between our two countries conservative bumpkins

This will probably be just another short-lived Canadian thread, but it's in the news so I thought I'd bring it up. Anyone heard about the robocall scandal? Basically automated calls were made in some ridings during the last Canadian Election directing Liberal (and in some cases NDP and even Green) voters to go to the wrong polling station, or claiming to be from the receiver's party and saying rude things, presumably with the intention of making them not want to vote.

Anyway, it seems that this somehow came from the Conservative Party, who won a majority government (by a margin of ~6000 seats). Here's an editorial on it that I liked:
National Post Editorial