Get angry . . .

KUDOS TO THE SIXTH ESTATE, for going to all the cerebral effort to post "Inside Elections Canada’s Whitewash Report on Election Fraud: Armwaving, Cynicism, Red Herrings". If you missed it, you must read it — and get very, very angry.

Harper: The ramming of religious tribalism down your throat

Consider these seven points:

1. Disdain for the environmental movement
2. Distrust of mainstream science in general
3. Distrust of the mainstream media
4. Loyalty to the party
5. Libertarian economics as God's will
6. Misundertandings of divine sovereignty - God won't let us ruin creation
7. Unreconstructed Dominion theology - God calls all humans to subdue and rule creation

If you listen to the Harperites, and Harper himself, on almost any subject, they and he express those seven points, particularly since they formed a majority government. They have neatly avoided any reference to "God", but the underlying message originates with those seven points.

Those seven points were presented by Dr. David Gushee, a renowned ethicist and Holocaust scholar. He was referring to the U.S. Conservative religious resistance to climate change science. He could easily have been describing the Harper regime.

Now go read Andrew Nikiforuk

Almost daily, more evidence surfaces that Canada's government is guided by tribalists averse to scientific reason in favour of Biblical fundamentalism -- or what some call "evangelical religious skepticism."

First came Canada's pull-out of the Kyoto agreement without any rational or achievable national plan to battle carbon pollution.

Next came the hysterical and unprecedented letter by Natural Resource Minister Joe Oliver, an investment banker. It branded local environmentalists and First Nations as foreign radicals because they dared to question the economic and environmental impacts of a Chinese-funded pipeline.

It just gets better, so do read the whole article.

Now consider this: If Andrew Nikiforuk's assessment is accurate, it means that Harper is on a crusade.

Religious crusaders believe God is on their side and that whatever they do to promote the will of God, (as they define it amongst themselves), is fully justified. Whether it's medieval massacres of the defenceless or the modern subversion of democratic rights, the end justifies the means. Opposition must be crushed since it is composed wholly of lost non-believers.

So, to what level would a modern-day crusader sink to fulfill God's will and gain power?

Voter suppression goes to court and committee

The Council of Canadians, representing electors in seven ridings where "irregularities" have been clearly reported, is pushing the voter suppression scandal into federal court.

A citizen advocacy group is asking the Federal Court of Canada to overturn election results in seven ridings where telephone dirty tricks may have kept voters away from the polls.

The Council of Canadians says pre-recorded robocalls and live calls influenced the outcome of votes in closely fought races in British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon and Ontario.

The group is backing the first legal challenge of election results since the Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News revealed ongoing Elections Canada investigations into misleading election day calls in Guelph and other ridings.

The organization's lawyers filed four applications in court on Friday and was due to file three more Monday, all seeking have the results of the votes set aside.

The applications claim that irregular, fraudulent or illegal activities affected the outcome in each of the seven ridings.

All of the ridings named were won by Conservative candidates and all but one was decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.

This challenge is an application to have the results of the last election in those ridings declared invalid. A court challenge of this kind can be tricky but it does open the doors to compelling all candidates to turn over records of their campaign activities. Impolitical provides some details and speculation that is well worth noting.

The other event on the voter suppression horizon is the appearance of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand before a parliamentary committee. The ploy by the Harperites to schedule that appearance at the same time that the bulk of the Ottawa press corps will be sequestered in the budget lock-down demonstrates the childish nature of the Harper government, and that's about all it does. Given the obvious focus of Postmedia reporters Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor you have to ask yourself which event you think an editor would have them assigned to cover that day. 

Right.

Then you have to ask yourself, would the Harperites really have extended an invitation to Mayrand if they thought he already had incendiary evidence of Conservative election-rigging? 

Nope. 

And before anyone goes off half-cocked, the latest consistent bad habit of the Harperites, (conducting committee hearings in camera), would leave the Conservatives totally screwed in this case. Remember that Mayrand asked for this appearance. Since this deals directly with electoral issues, shutting the doors and booting out the public would only serve to reinforce the belief that the Harperites have something extremely sensitive to hide. 

The Sixth Estate has an excellent prognosis that is a must read.

Vancouver Island North again

On Feb 28th CHEK TV in Victoria reported a voter suppression call in the riding of Vancouver Island North. At that time it was a live call made in the town of Woss and it appeared to be the only incident.

Now it seems to have spread and this report is indicating there may have been automated robo-calls misdirecting voters to non-existent polling stations.

The Vancouver Island North NDP candidate in the May 2011 election said Wednesday several people complained to her recently about receiving automated phone calls directing them away from legitimate polling stations.
“I thought it was a non-story (in this riding),” said Ronna-Rae Leonard, who finished a close second to incumbent Conservative MP John Duncan.
Then the city councillor in Courtenay started to hear from concerned voters who said they had been misled by automated calls.
Cumberland resident Yvonne Kafka said an automated call told her not to vote at the usual polling station in the village, although she confirmed the location and voted.
“If they did it to me, they must have done it to other people,” said Kafka, who has not heard back from Elections Canada about her complaint.
Leonard said a Merville resident told her she was misdirected to the former Tsolum School to vote after she had voted for years at the Merville Hall. The woman, who declined Thursday to be interviewed or identified, told Leonard she was interviewed by Elections Canada.
One woman in Comox told Leonard a call “was directing her to the Comox Mall to vote, where there was no poll.” Leonard said the woman, who had not given Leonard permission to identify her, did manage to vote.
Leonard said she suspects people have not come forward before now because they suspected misleading calls were just a hoax, and they didn’t see the gravity of attempting to defraud voters.

 John Duncan, the Conservative incumbent, won the seat by 1827 votes in a 66.4% voter turnout.

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Now, over to visit The Gazetteer, where he has read Prof. Anke Kessler's draft paper on voter suppression and makes a report. As RossK points out, since Kessler's paper, (which focused on the initial 27 ridings), the spread of the contagion has become more widely known and is now into triple digits.

Pull thread to unravel

The Sixth Estate has a very cogent theory on how the voter suppression effort during the last federal election may have unfolded. It's important to read the whole piece but for those of you doing this on the short ...

As April 2011 careened to a close, there were a few pollsters willing to stick their neck out and predict a Conservative majority, but the general consensus was that they would not quite achieve that mark. Moreover it was generally expected, particularly among Conservative ranks, that the NDP and the Liberals would not put up with another Harper minority. Instead they would join forces, and, absurd as it might have sounded even two months  before, the late Jack Layton would be prime minister. Harper’s career would be over. So would those of the coterie of pseudo-intelligent political strategists with which he’s surrounded himself.

So, at some point in that last worrying week of April, the decision was made to order several different units to do what they could to suppress the vote, using tips and tricks they’d picked up from campaign training sessions with American Republicans. We know these sessions happened, we know that these sort of dirty tricks are quite routine fare (for both parties) south of the border, and, in fact, in some states deliberately misdirecting people to bogus polling stations isn’t even against the law.

I’m not sure who these units were. Maybe they were inside the Target Seat Management Unit. Maybe they were in the Conservative Resource Group. Maybe they were just whatever little network of local campaign staffers were personal friends of whichever senior strategist decided to activate Plan B. Whatever it was, they weren’t entirely prepared for it. They had a general idea what to do, but they hadn’t planned it out in advance — again, because if they had, they would have done a better job of it.

From the perspective of the individuals activating the covert op, there would have been no real downside. If they won a majority, they would be able to stonewall Elections Canada from now to judgement day, or at least until the next election. (This was actually happening, until Postmedia broke the story wide open in February and suddenly Elections Canada decided it should be seriously investigating the case after all.) If they lost and the NDP seized power, what would it matter? Their careers would already be over anyways, and the NDP would be too busy enjoying their newfound power to look too carefully into a vote fraud scheme that hadn’t even worked anyways.

That's about the way I would break it out, although I would add a few other features.

There is a reason we do not allow the young lieutenant or brand-new sergeant to plan and execute delicate military operations, especially those which require enduring cover. They always leave stuff out. That's not because they're stupid; it's because they haven't had the sense of invincibility beaten out of them yet. It's one thing to be able to produce a covert action plan; it's quite another to be able to plan it in enough detail to have it executed without leaving evidence behind.

One of the common threads of those whose names keep appearing, (and that is not to say that they are guilty), around the voter suppression issue, is their relative young age. Behaviours involving high-risk, without consideration of possible consequences, tends to fall into the arena of young males. That fits the analysis provided by The Sixth Estate. A quick look at the two outcomes of a covert operation would not reveal the pitfalls to be avoided. The whole thing looks like a very poorly planned operation executed with arrogant invincibility. Not the work of a seasoned campaigner.

There is another dangling thread which may have panicked the Harper campaign. The Christian conservatives, a considerable force in the minority Harper-base, were not happy. They wanted their people elected to a majority Conservative caucus so as to put the squeeze on Harper himself. Some wanted to see themselves in enough control to replace Harper. A minority victory would give them as much ammunition as they needed to turf Harper into the gutter.

Even if a minority showing did not result in an NDP led coalition government, (which I believe would have happened), the Harper faction of the Conservative party would have been toast. In a party with no clear field of succession, the loose fusion of western separatists, Christian conservatives, racists and right-wing authoritarians would have likely collapsed in an all-out pig-fight for the leadership.That aside, again, the only way the Harper loyalists could possibly keep their jobs was to squeeze out a majority to fend off the threats from within their own party.

That brings up something of a post-script. Simon puts the bristles onto Speaker Andrew Scheer and his involvement in the Guelph riding. Far from being non-partisan, Scheer is a member of the faction which would have exiled Harper to the wilderness in another minority government. In a majority however, although wholly unsuited to the position, he becomes the HoC head referee. As much as I believe there is some quid pro quo involved, I also see Harper's Dionysius to Scheer's Damocles.

The literalist, authoritarian, Christian right cannot be discounted as possible players in the whole affair. But that's for another time.

Partisan to the core

I suppose it was all in the spirit of "giving".

The political machine behind the man who is now Speaker of the House of Commons opened its wallet for the Guelph Conservative campaign currently under scrutiny by Election Canada’s robo-calls probe, records at the watchdog agency show. 

Less than two weeks before the 2011 election, Andrew Scheer’s Regina-Qu’Appelle riding association in Saskatchewan transferred $3,000 to the Guelph Conservative campaign for candidate Marty Burke. 

Elections Canada records suggest this was the only Conservative riding association outside Guelph to transfer cash to Mr. Burke’s campaign during the writ period.  

The smell is starting to permeate the robes.

Does voter suppression change the result?

Looks that way.

Via Creekside we get some simple and easy to read crunching from Brian-Michel, complete with this graph:

 

Of course, Dean del Mastro will be sent out at some point to state that no one can prove people didn't vote simply because "somebody" executed a strategy to mislead voters. Oh right ...

There is more, of course. Anke Kessler has done a rather thorough statistical analysis where she concludes:

In 27 of the 308 ridings, voters allegedly received automated phone calls containing false information on the location of their election site, or harassing them in the name of one of the contestants. The results suggest that, on average, voter turnout in those ridings affected by the demobilization efforts is significantly lower than in the ridings where no automated phone calls have been reported. The point estimate gives 3 percentage points.  As such, the effect is considerably smaller than the 50 percent reduction in turnout that Barton (2011) finds.  But since nothing is yet known about the total numbers of voters that actually have received a phone call,  if any,  those numbers are not comparable. Besides, Barton’s results are based on a framed-field experiment with little consequence of failing to go to the polls and it may be difficult to draw inferences regarding actual elections.  In either case, Barton also reports that pre-election warnings against possible fraudulent messages inoculates voters against misinformation effects, and generally restores voter turnout.   If his  findings are taken at face value,  the  outlook is positive: having been warned, the Canadian electorate should now be guarded against any future attempts at demobilization.

Now, I'm pretty certain the average person would find Kessler's paper extremely difficult to read. It took me several reads to be able to agree with the conclusion above. It is worth reading the Introduction from the bottom of page 1 through page 2. As opposed to using just riding data, she bores into individual polling station statistics. What Kessler assesses is very telling.

On average, voter turnout was 3 percentage points lower in those ridings from which complaints had been received as opposed to ridings from which no such complaints had been received. Using the average such riding as a benchmark, this translates into roughly 2,500 fewer voters at the polls.

Oh yes. Before dismissing Anke Kessler as some university student trying to make a name for herself, be aware that she is Professor Anke Kessler, Ph.D. in the Economics Dept. at Simon Fraser University. 

One point made by Prof. Kessler that should bode well for future elections is that the electorate will be much more wary of attempts to suppress the vote.

That may be cold comfort if we have to put up with Harper and his vile brand of politics for a full four to five years. And, of course, there is another problem. Given that all evidence points to the Harper campaign as the perpetrators of a voter suppression effort, we have no idea what desperate tactic they will engage in an attempt to hold onto power. Unless we figure it out first.

Further good read.

The Shattering

You could make book that there are a lot of phones busy and nobody is sending anybody to a non-existent voting place. But that's what's being discussed.

Ian Brodie, Harpers chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, had this to add to the voter suppression file:

Something seems to have gone on, on a scale I’ve never seen before

Hard to disagree with that. Brodie, a Harper insider, is now contradicting Harper and Del Mastro who have both been denying anything and everything.

Over at The Sixth Estate the big question. The Conservatives apparently have access to campaign phone records and, since they are the subject of an investigation, it is only proper that we know how it is anybody under investigation came to be in possession of them.

A few days in May

There was a bright shining light on the morning of Tuesday, 3 May, 2011. Unfortunately it was shrouded by the gloom felt by most people who had headed to the polls the day before.

A majority of Canadians who voted had cast their ballots for someone other than the candidate running under the Harper banner yet, owing to an electoral process which recognizes plurality, Harper had achieved his dream of personal power with a parliamentary majority.

That upset created a whirlwind of media activity, speculation and (for some) loud rejoicing. There were three BIG stories that dominated the morning of May 3rd: The Harper majority; the crushing defeat of the Liberal party; and, the rise of the NDP as the new Official Opposition. You could shuffle the order of those stories any way you liked, but that was pretty much it.

Which meant the bright shining light, which had been ignited the day before, was now stuffed behind a closed closet door. Almost nobody noticed.

As Alison points out, however, it was there the whole time, staring us in the face. In those early days of May evidence of election wrongdoing was readily apparent and, by the morning of Tuesday, 3 May, 2011, there was every indication that it was deliberate, calculated and expansive.

It was washed over almost immediately. In ridings with close races 2nd place finishers who complained about voter-suppression tactics were dismissed as sore losers. Voters who complained were drowned-out by the celebratory noises of the likes of Rex Murphy and a narcissistic media punditry performing an electoral postmortem which focused on little more than their own navels.

Canadians, who had come to believe that elections in this country were scrupulously clean and well managed, (despite attack ads and irritating invasions of the telephone system by all parties), were, for the most part, glad just to have the damn thing done and over with. Execrable acts of election fraud would only prolong the agony of the previous 36 days (which Harper had managed to turn into years with the endless campaign)

The perpetrators of the strategy to suppress opposition votes were counting on exactly that.

I don't know of any organization the size of a national political party which does not perform a post-event analysis. It is how they stay efficient. In the case of a federal election all political parties would have carried out a detailed dissection of the operations of their campaigns to determine what worked and what didn't. That would include this unit of the Harper campaign.

It is also well-known that large organizations, whether they be corporations, churches, government departments or national political parties, watch media items related to their activities like a hawk. Message management, (something the Harperites treat as a religious item), requires never allowing a potentially damaging item to drift around without at least some prepared tactical response.

And that means that the same items which Alison has shown to have been in public view in those early days of May 2011 were a part of the scrutiny that most assuredly was carried out by the Harper campaign immediately after the election. They knew then that there was a bright shining light and they would have prepared for any exposure. From May 2011 to February 2012 they were trying to cover up.

Any competent party leader would also have been aware. In May, 2011.

That would mean that Harper knew, chose not to know, or is just plain stupid.

Toto. I don't think we're in Guelph anymore.

A short summary (with links).

Where are we? Well, right across the country. Only now, instead of just watching the TV news and wondering about the veracity of the reports, you can go look for yourself at archived comments that were posted one and two days before the last federal election.

Starting with the statement from the Chief Electoral Officer, then moving on to the digging done by one of The Gazetteers readers we move out of Guelph completely.

From the online comments of two people posted on 30 April 2011 and 1 May 2011 we have Halifax, Nova Scotia originated calls from the Conservative Party of Canada that went out to Fredricton, New Brunswick and to Mission, British Columbia.

Not robocalls - live calls. In both cases the caller attempted to mislead voters by announcing a change in voting location.

Does the thought, "centrally coordinated national voter-suppression strategy" start to drift through your brain?

More pretty dots. More evidence

Go over to The Gazetteer and watch the video of the CBC report. Then go down and read the first comment from the very diligent North Van Grumps.

On the video a Lori Bruce is interviewed and stated that she had a call from the Conservative Party telling her that her voting place had moved. She googled the number, 902-800-1015, as can be seen during the interview.

Now go here where the number 902-800-1015, the one on Lori Bruce's screen, is the subject of some complaining. Scroll down to a comment left on 30 Apr 2011 by one LoriB.

Here is what she said then:

I just got a call from this number. They told me the location where I vote on Monday has changed.  I called Elections Canada and was told the location has not changed and I was not the first call they had today asking the same thing.

Lori Bruce is in Fredricton New Brunswick.

Now go to the comment just below by Astrid back on 1 May 2011.

Received the 6th or 7th call in two weeks from the Conservative Party. This last one, about an hour ago, she told me locations to vote had changed, Told her no, I know where it is, this is after I declared "oh, no, not again". Are these people just so desperate?
Worst call came form Randy Kamp's (MLA) office in Mission, the man actually demanded that I tell him who I am voting for. Made it perfectly clear that that was NONE of his business.
Am going to contact Elections Canada and register a complaint too.

Astrid appears to be in the riding of Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission, British Columbia where Randy Kamp, Conservative, is the MP.

Comments left on a site a few days before the last election, from ridings on either side of the country - not Guelph.

Must add:  Area code 902 covers Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Fredricton is in area code 506. Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission is in area code 604 and 778. The prefix 800 in area code 902 is in Halifax.
 

Marc Mayrand: With Much Pleasure - Now please send invitation (Updated)

The Chief Electoral Officer has something to say, and he'd like to say it to a parliamentary committee.

Immediately following the 2011 general election, the Commissioner of Canada Elections deployed resources to investigate complaints of fraudulent or improper calls. Since then, over 700 Canadians from across the country have informed us of specific circumstances where they believe similar wrongdoing took place.

Watch that figure closely. 700 reported. That will be the figure the Harperites fling around. They will need to be reminded that they told us this.

Update: Mr. Mayrand might want to discuss some of this.

Anatomy of a voter suppression conspiracy

Stephen Lauten has laid out a very plausible track and concludes that the voter suppression that appears to have occurred could only have been a well coordinated plan carried out by a very knowledgeable group.

Go read.

OK... we'll wait for a bit on this one

David Akin has extricated a letter to the editor of the Globe and Mail from John Fryer, an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria.

It's pretty damning stuff.

I know John Fryer. He's not taken to misrepresenting events such as this. In short, I'm inclined to believe him.

Am I accusing the Manning Centre of anything? No. Nothing yet.

Do I believe they would show people how to engage in voter suppression? Not yet, but since it is little more than a Conservative political boot camp, they wear the same level of trustworthiness as the Harperites they spawned, and the behaviour of the Harperites is the worst we have ever seen in this country.

We'll keep an eye on this one because if Fryer expands on this in any way which suggest that voter suppression was a part of either training or a workshop, well, they have nothing to explain. They will have lived up to all our expectations.

Hat tip to Steve in comments who also writes here.