Votes and voices suppressed
February 26, 2012 | 3 Comments
At last year’s Canadian Association of Journalists’ Annual Conference, one of the panels was a post-mortem on the recently held federal election. The panelists (Chantal Hebert, Elly Alboim and Jeff Sallott and Paul Adams of the Globe and Mail) debated the question of whether it could be called “the Twitter election”. The panelists addressed this question (for the most part, no, they felt) as well as the NDP’s surprising results.
Sitting in on the panel, I furiously took notes, including one throw-away comment that has stuck with me for close to a year now. I believe it came from Elly Alboim- he stated that the real story was not Twitter’s influence, nor the orange crush, but the rumours of voter suppression. I recall being skeptical; that kind of thing could not happen in Canada, I thought. Being a reporter, I also thought that that would be an amazing story to dig into, should one have the time and resources.
And now Postmedia News has brought forth these disturbing allegations with some pretty convincing proof. I can’t help but recall Alboim’s words, as well as my own skepticism. How could this happen in Canada? This has also sparked another memory for me: a university professor who was heavily involved in Elections Canada, walked our class through the intricacies of Canada’s electoral system. One thing he kept stressing was the solidity and integrity of Canada’s system. And now we have these allegations.
It is important to distinguish between the electoral system and those who use it, whether it be partisan workers, voters or administrators. The system itself remains intact and relatively strong in terms of preventing fraud. However, the system does not explicitly prevent partisan election workers from behaving dishonestly. There are many grey areas into which one’s behaviour can fall. The Elections Act, can, however, punish the behaviour, which if proven true, is illegal. What is most disturbing and distressing is the integrity, or lack thereof, of those privileged with working closely within the electoral system, which is admired around the world for its efficiency, effectiveness and relative lack of fraudulent occurrences.
What does it say about our integrity as a country that people allegedly prevented Canadian citizens from exercising their precious right to vote? Could they have been so caught up in the desire to secure their candidate a seat that they threatened a fellow citizen’s freedom to vote? Is this endemic to the Conservative party? Is it widespread and systemic? Is it a contemporary issue, fuelled by social media? It’s too early to know.
What is clear is that this doesn’t seem like something that would happen in Canada. But this attitude represents the general complacency with which many voters regard the right to vote. For most people, voting is an inconvenience. Hopefully, this episode of voter suppression will not provide further  justification for people not to vote. In the meantime, it is looking more and more likely during our 41st election, things happened that necessitate a readjustment of our perspective- this kind of thing apparently did happen in Canada.
Tags: Elections > robocall > voter suppression
Comments
3 Responses to “Votes and voices suppressed”
Leave a Reply
February 27th, 2012 @ 9:48 am
Having seen the inside of many campaigns (municipal, provincial, federal, and various political parties) I’m not surprised at all by these allegations. Every campaign that I’ve seen includes dark elements, things that would be scandalous to a citizen unaccustomed to the sausage-making that *is* our political system.*
And such activities wouldn’t draw the attention of the public, mainly because they are normally terribly unsuccessful. This is not for wont of effort, just lack of skill, resources and organization.
I think it makes a lot of sense that the Conservative Party is the first to get caught doing something like this. In the past ten years they have really improved the game of politics in this country. Other parties are still catching up. So the CPC is the first party to be *able* to organize something like this at the federal level.
So an authorized or unauthorized (it scarcely matters) group of conservatives ran a black ops political campaign. They had the skills, the organization and the funds to make it effective (or at least, to get noticed).
Canadians should rightly be outraged by this scandal. But they should also be under no delusions that this is an isolated incident restricted to one party. This *is* our political system, and I doubt very much that it will change.
* For instance, here in Saskatchewan, we recently had a liberal volunteer found guilty of defamation for accusing a local MP of sexual assault (the MP is a priest) as a caller during a live call-in show. Dumbly, the liberal volunteer called *from* the liberal campaign office: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/02/14/sk-vellacott-lawsuit-1202.html?cmp=rss
[Reply]
February 29th, 2012 @ 10:43 am
With good reason, I (along with many, many others) are assuming this traces back to conservative-party members or like-minded folks, with either official or unofficial affiliation with the party, government, or the Conservative campaign.
But with a bit more time to think about it, I’d prefer to be more cautious with my assumptions, though I won’t blame others for continuing to look for the CPC connection here.
Still, I’m given pause by the recent Ibbitson column which argues that all but 2 ridings where these calls are alleged to have occurred were won by the Conservatives by thousands of votes. Why target these apparently safe ridings?
[Reply]
Katherine Reply:
March 1st, 2012 at 3:54 pm
They happened in the riding adjacent to mine, Saanich-Gulf Islands, where Elizabeth May had a very competitive race against Conservative incumbent Gary Lunn.
[Reply]