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.]

Friday, April 20, 2012

Misleading election calls intentional, alleges new affidavit in federal election legal actions

The Council of Canadians is releasing an affidavit today, which alleges that the misleading phone calls during the last federal election could not have been accidental and were likely organized by someone “at, or very close to the top of the party’s campaign decision-making structure.”

The sworn affidavit from Bob Penner, President and CEO of Strategic Communications Inc, is the latest document which the Council of Canadians intends to present as evidence in support of applications by individual citizens seeking to overturn federal election results in seven ridings.

Penner’s affidavit alleges that “A live or recorded call advising an elector that Elections Canada has made a last minute change to that elector's polling station location is almost certain to have been intended to similarly suppress the vote if the call is being made to a supporter of another party... the only plausible explanation for such calling to have occurred is for someone at the senior level in a central political campaign to have authorized the strategy and provided the data and the funds with which to carry it out.”

Penner alleges several reasons why the claim that “misdirecting calls were simply mistakes and artifacts of inaccuracies of the voter lists provided by Elections Canada... is not plausible... There would be absolutely no legitimate reason for a political party to knowingly call the supporters of another party to encourage them to vote, or to alert them to a polling location change. Any such call must have another purpose, such as suppression of the opponent's turnout.”

The affidavit further alleges that “access to data across several ridings of pre-identified non- supporters of a political party would be available to very few people, and their access to and use of such data could be easily tracked by senior members of the central campaign, who would be responsible for managing the party's central information system and for their campaign overall. If there was a "hack" of the system, this would also be identifiable by those running the campaign.”

Penner has more than 20 years as a political consultant, and has developed and implemented sophisticated voter contact programs and other tools for a variety of clients. Stratcom was one of the first Canadian firms to specialize in this area.

Original Article
Source: canadians.org
Author: --

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