In his 2008 book How to Rig an Election, Allen Raymond tells the story of his 10-year political career, which ended abruptly when he was convicted of jamming the New Hampshire Democrats' phone bank during a Senate election.
When the FBI closed in, officials on the Republican National Committee cut off Raymond, and rather than face 25 years in prison, he co-operated with the investigation.
Raymond, who now works in Washington as a lobbyist for a labour organization, suspects whoever made illegal voter-suppression calls in Canada in the last election likely learned their dirty tricks south of the border.
"We have a lot of elections down here," he said. "We essentially have them every year, whether it be state or federal. So if you're a political operative and you live in Canada, it might make a lot of sense to come to the United States and gain some experience, and in gaining that experience you might pick up some bad traits."
Dirty telephone tricks aren't new. In the 1972 Democratic primary, callers with African-American accents woke up white New Hampshire voters in the middle of the night calling on them to support Ed Muskie "because he's been so good for the black man" — an early example of voter suppression calls.
In every election cycle in the United States, there are instances of deceptive calls, but they tend to be isolated local events.
In Canada, the extent of the calls is in dispute, but Marc Mayrand, the country's chief electoral officer, testified recently that Elections Canada is evaluating specific allegations in 200 ridings.
"The thing that stands out most egregiously is the number of ridings involved," said Raymond. "This seems to be fairly systematic. That's a fairly sophisticated operation. This thing is not rocket science but it does require some knowledge of the process. Now you're talking about 200 ridings. So it's a little bit more complex. It takes some co-ordination. It takes some money."
Dirty telephone tricks take place again and again in the same regions in the United States, said Raymond: New England and the so-called 'rust belt' states.
"These are places where it's very hard for the Republicans to win," he said. "So a lot of times you're looking to polarize the electorate. The ultimate polarization would be voter suppression."
When Raymond was asked to jam the Democrats' phone banks, he said, he felt he couldn't say no because he needed to stay on the good side of the Republican National Committee. He called a lawyer, who wrongly advised him the calls would be legal, but he said he didn't think about the ethics of the calls.
"Voters are just a commodity when you're in this business," he said. "You're just trying to get enough to win. Are they people? Sure they are, but at the end of the day they're just part of the transaction. You detach yourself because you've got a job to do."
When the FBI closed in, party bosses asked him to resign from the Republican Leadership Council, told reporters that he had acted alone, and made it plain that they expected him to take the fall. Raymond dutifully kept his mouth shut until it was clear he was going to prison.
Investigators target the little guys, Raymond said, as a way of putting pressure on bigger fish.
"Those are the ones who they are going to go after," he said. "And the question is, the guys with the money, are they prepared to let them take the fall?"
The party backed James Tobin, the Republican official linked to the illegal calls, spending $6 million on his ultimately successful legal defence, Raymond said.
Tobin's boss at the time, RNC political director Terry Nelson, was linked to the 2011 Canadian Conservative campaign through Patrick Muttart, who worked for him at Mercury Public Affairs in Chicago. Muttart, a former senior strategist, worked as a messaging consultant for the Conservatives in the 2011 campaign until he was fired for his role in providing Sun News Network with a fake photo of Michael Ignatieff in an American military uniform.
Raymond said political organizations facing legal jeopardy circle the wagons, devise a legal strategy and get ready to spend money.
In the United States, "if you've got millions of dollars at your disposal, you can more or less get out of anything. In something like this, enough money's going to get you out of the problem. And if somebody else has to go down, well, that's their problem. If you're not a big enough fish then you're easily sacrificed."
The real danger for a government is a coverup, Raymond said. In watching the Conservative reaction to the Canadian robocall allegations, he said, he found it odd when the Conservatives accused the Liberals of misdirecting their own supporters.
"The rationale was that Liberals were making phone calls to Liberal households in these ridings telling them to vote in a place that didn't exist," he said. "Logically that just doesn't work. In politics, usually it's not so much the infraction but it's the coverup that does the damage. That certainly has the stench of coverup."
Mayrand recently testified that Elections Canada needs stiffer sentences if Canadians want it to crack down on dirty tricks in election campaigns.
Raymond said that's likely a good idea.
"I think that Canada may want to take a look at stiffer punishments for this kind of activity if it's going to increase," he said. "And my theory would be anytime something like this gets a toehold, it's not going to shrink, it's going to grow."
Stiff sentences give investigators a way of getting to the truth, he said, because nobody wants to go to prison.
He said he didn't enjoy his time behind bars.
"I wouldn't recommend it for anybody."
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Stephen Maher
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