Political scandals such as the "robocalls" affair are always much bigger deals the closer you stand to the action and the principal players.
These days in political Ottawa and in the Guelph, Ont. stomping grounds of Pierre Poutine, for example, the story is only a notch or two below doomsday status. Elsewhere the issue seems much farther from real-world lives unless you have particularly strong feelings for or against Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
As the days pass and the revelations and counter-revelations accumulate, however, it becomes necessary for the rest of us to start looking more closely and carefully at the matter - to separate three quite distinct questions:
1. To what extent, if any, has the validity of the last election been undermined? That is, would the result at a local or national level have been different?
2. Was Canada's election law bro-ken, and if so, who is to blame?
3. What, if anything, do the answers to these questions have to do with policies being pursued by the government on crime, budgeting, health and the rest?
Prime Minister Harper in recent days has explicitly and categorically insisted that neither he nor his national team knew anything about a dirty-tricks campaign for suppressing voter turnout, a claim it is difficult not to accept. There is no reason to believe that a cheater's culture exists in the Tories' ruling circle, or that it would countenance such a foolish risk for likely only marginal gains - and until there is evidence, there is no reason why we would set aside a majority government and refight the last election.
Indeed, the result of the May 2 vote - still only 10 months ago - made it clear that Canadians drew a clear distinction between policy choices and allegations of impropriety on the "in-and-out" campaign finance controversy. There is no reason to assume we would be any keener today than they were last spring to have the overall direction of government change on such grounds.
Having said that, if ongoing investigations suggest that illegal or unethical campaign tactics by any party may have affected the result in specific individual constituencies, voters should be given a byelection opportunity to make sure the representative they have is the one they would have chosen if the vote had been conducted cleanly and fairly.
Sadly, there is no way to go back in time to make sure byelection vote tallies are the ones we should have seen when the snapshot of the rest of the country's political preferences was taken. Still, a rerun a year later will be better for the integrity of our political system than not holding one at all.
In the extremely unlikely event that such an outcome costs the Harper Conservatives a majority, the party and its supporters would have to accept that as the price of imposing too little discipline on its followers in the hurly-burly of the campaign.
In the meantime, Canadians of all stripes should remind themselves that the primary goal should not be to invalidate an election result, but rather to identify and punish individual wrongdoers and to make sure any proven election-day misbehaviour never happens again.
Original Article
Source: edmonton journal
Author: --
These days in political Ottawa and in the Guelph, Ont. stomping grounds of Pierre Poutine, for example, the story is only a notch or two below doomsday status. Elsewhere the issue seems much farther from real-world lives unless you have particularly strong feelings for or against Stephen Harper's Conservatives.
As the days pass and the revelations and counter-revelations accumulate, however, it becomes necessary for the rest of us to start looking more closely and carefully at the matter - to separate three quite distinct questions:
1. To what extent, if any, has the validity of the last election been undermined? That is, would the result at a local or national level have been different?
2. Was Canada's election law bro-ken, and if so, who is to blame?
3. What, if anything, do the answers to these questions have to do with policies being pursued by the government on crime, budgeting, health and the rest?
Prime Minister Harper in recent days has explicitly and categorically insisted that neither he nor his national team knew anything about a dirty-tricks campaign for suppressing voter turnout, a claim it is difficult not to accept. There is no reason to believe that a cheater's culture exists in the Tories' ruling circle, or that it would countenance such a foolish risk for likely only marginal gains - and until there is evidence, there is no reason why we would set aside a majority government and refight the last election.
Indeed, the result of the May 2 vote - still only 10 months ago - made it clear that Canadians drew a clear distinction between policy choices and allegations of impropriety on the "in-and-out" campaign finance controversy. There is no reason to assume we would be any keener today than they were last spring to have the overall direction of government change on such grounds.
Having said that, if ongoing investigations suggest that illegal or unethical campaign tactics by any party may have affected the result in specific individual constituencies, voters should be given a byelection opportunity to make sure the representative they have is the one they would have chosen if the vote had been conducted cleanly and fairly.
Sadly, there is no way to go back in time to make sure byelection vote tallies are the ones we should have seen when the snapshot of the rest of the country's political preferences was taken. Still, a rerun a year later will be better for the integrity of our political system than not holding one at all.
In the extremely unlikely event that such an outcome costs the Harper Conservatives a majority, the party and its supporters would have to accept that as the price of imposing too little discipline on its followers in the hurly-burly of the campaign.
In the meantime, Canadians of all stripes should remind themselves that the primary goal should not be to invalidate an election result, but rather to identify and punish individual wrongdoers and to make sure any proven election-day misbehaviour never happens again.
Original Article
Source: edmonton journal
Author: --
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