Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Harper’s idea of ‘fairness’ belongs in Arizona

Stephen Harper would make a good governor of Arizona.

In addition to the lies and sleaziness his government has been serving up during its majority, its sickening reliance on marketing over truth, its dishonest use of technology in political matters, and its shameful abuse of language, the prime minister is blighting democracy in the name of political advantage.

When Stephen Harper gave Canada fixed elections dates, no one expected a whole lot more “fixing” was still to come. There was; Bill C-23. By potentially removing hundreds of thousands of voters from the next election, Canada could now have elections with fixed dates and fixed results.

Back to Arizona. In that state, voters must now present proof of citizenship before they can cast their ballots. It’s the same in Kansas. Like a lot of Republican states, Arizona claims the legislation is designed to battle massive voter fraud.

Except there has been no massive voter fraud, not in Arizona, not in Texas, not in Kansas, nowhere in the United States. The only fraud is the legislation itself, passed by nine Republican states since 2013 looking ahead to congressional elections, and ultimately to the presidential election of 2016.

As reported in the New York Times, Ohio and Wisconsin have also changed their electoral systems, limiting the time polls are open. They have even shortened the period of access to polls on the weekend — the favoured time to cast ballots for low-income and African American voters, who not usually Republican supporters.

The worst electoral system in the United States belongs to the Republican state of North Carolina, where the number of advance voting days has been severely cut, registering to vote has become onerous, student and state worker IDs have been excluded, and same-day voter registration has been abolished.

Last Friday, the president of the United States spoke out against the real reason these Republican states are passing restrictive electoral reform — to suppress the vote in swing states for political advantage. Obama told the National Action Network Convention that the right to vote in America was gravely “threatened” under state legislation that was “making it harder, not easier, for people to vote.”

While Barack Obama stood up against the erosion of democracy, Stephen Harper copied the Republican politicians who are doing the eroding. The “Fair Elections Act” is just another example of how this government uses words that appear to be saying one thing, when they actually are doing the polar opposite. It is a tired, shabby tactic that Harper has been using for years, and which now seems to be catching up to him. Brent Rathgeber had it right; under Stephen Harper, the Conservatives have morphed into what they once despised. The Fair Elections Act supplies more proof.

In the 2011 election, 120,000 people voted because someone vouched for them. Bill C-23 ends vouching. Minister for Democratic Reform Pierre Poilievre has made it up as he goes along defending this democracy-killing bill. He says, for example, that people can use a treaty card or student card to vote — patently untrue, since neither has a street address, which became a requirement under draconian changes to ID rules made back in 2008.

Voter information cards, which do have a street address, will no longer be proof of either identity or residence, making life miserable for residents in long-term-care facilities, First Nations reserves, or those who have moved in the past several months. An estimated 30 per cent of eligible voters don’t have driver’s licenses, so without vouching, and without voter information cards, what are these people supposed to do?

The government says that there is a list of 25 identity cards that might be used, but most of them don’t display a street address. And what about all those rural voters who don’t have a street address — only a post-office box or rural route number? Do they all apply for passports?

Marjaleena Repo, who has managed two federal election campaigns, put into perspective just how great an impact not having the proper ID can have. “Elections Canada’s post-election survey showed that almost five per cent of registered voters in 2008 — about 500,000 people — said they did not vote because they lacked the proper documentation. What a difference their vote could have made in that election,” she wrote in the Star Phoenix.

One of Poilievre’s bigger whoppers in selling his snake oil, C-23, is that the new restrictions are needed to deal with voter fraud. Apart from the minister’s fearmongering, he had no facts to back up his stated reason for restricting access to the vote. There is no massive voter fraud in Canada. Perhaps that’s why two of his colleagues faked it about personally witnessing cheating, only to later recant.

MP Brad Butt said he’d seen people taking voter information cards out of recycling bins and handing them over to others to cast fraudulent votes. Later, he called this Poilievre-friendly hallucination “an error on my part” and apologized. The Opposition called it a big, fat lie.

Conservative Senator Thomas McInnis also tried to create evidence by advancing a fantasy of his own. After telling the Senate committee examining proposed changes to Canada’s election laws that he had personally witnessed “thousands” of cases of voter fraud in Nova Scotia, his office issued a clarification. It was damage control mumbo-jumbo about “possible” cases of fraud, not ones he had actually witnessed. Such was Pierre Poilievre’s proof of voter fraud.

The funniest part of Poilievre’s justification for the ludicrously named Fair Elections Act is his claim that it would enhance the “integrity” of the electoral process. The fastest way to do that would be for the Conservative Party of Canada to stop cheating and lying. The classic cheating was the In-and-Out scandal, where the party confessed to breaking election expense rules during the 2006 election, an advantage that may have won them government. The classic lying was telling reporters that the CPC was not behind illegal robocalling in Saskatchewan.

Not only were they behind it, but their people used the same company that put out deliberately misleading robocalls in Guelph during the 2011 election — RackNine. Those calls were made based on lists taken from the CPC Constituent Information Management System, or CIMS.

With EC continuing to investigate robocalls, former cabinet minister Peter Penashue gone over election expense violations, and the PM’s former parliamentary secretary on his way to court for alleged electoral cheating, the minister of speaking points should spare Canadians sermons on integrity. A far more practical measure would be to reinstate enumeration, which produced comprehensive voter’s lists and healthier turnouts on Election Day.

No one should forget the basics here. Democracy in Canada is under the gun. No enumeration, shortened election campaigns, predator style micro-targeting based on voter demographics, more money for parties to buy the outcome, and a weakened federal watchdog.

Against the background of all that, Stephen Harper did not use the corruption of the robocalls affair to strengthen Elections Canada, but to weaken it. He did not use this opportunity to make things better for everyone — only to make things better for the Conservative Party of Canada. If this partisan deconstruction of fair elections in Canada becomes law, the Chief Electoral Officer will no longer be able to warn the public about frauds like the robocalls scandal. Perhaps that’s why the man who brought Stephen Harper into politics, Preston Manning, has implored the prime minister to amend the Fair Elections Act and restore democracy.

This would be an ideal time for the Senate to show Canadians it is not just the rich pasture for party hacks and bagmen that Stephen Harper once said it was. There is no support for Bill C-23 beyond the fawning confines of the PM’s parliamentary caucus. Senators on the Conservative side should remember that this is the same all-seeing prime minister whose own office undermined the integrity of the Upper Chamber during the Wright/Duffy Affair. Conservatives in the Senate should not be fast-tracking this abominable bill. They should be keeping faith with Canadians and amending it.

This is not reform, but opportunism tinged with revenge, from a prime minister who looks more Nixonian by the day.

Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca/
Author: Michael Harris

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