News Round-up For Our Disgraced Country

The majority on the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that procedural errors shouldn't deprive a vote of its integrity. You have to prove fraud in order for votes (with no accompanying verification) to be discounted.

What the SCOC did not do was to say that the government cannot create laws that restrict the right to vote. The point being that if a voter ID card is made mandatory and that voting without one is a felony (as is allowing someone to vote without one), then it's not a "clerical error" that can be discounted, but a true legal barrier.

The Ottawa Citizen sides with the minority SCOC opinion.

Conversely, the minority judgment strikes an appropriate balance between the fundamental right to vote and procedural safeguards. In this context, the minority ruling is much more persuasive in its adherence to a “comprehensive scheme” that defines entitlement to vote. One’s entitlement to vote does not merely rest on qualification as a Canadian citizen of age, but must also include appropriate voter registration and proper identification according to the provisions laid out in the Canada Elections Act in order to prevent those without the right to vote from voting.

...

With respect, the majority ruling applies a definition of voter entitlement that is too loose to safeguard the integrity of the electoral system. Further, maintaining that procedural errors in elections are inevitable, and therefore acceptable, is not a persuasive argument. Nor is such a position sufficient to maintain public trust in the electoral system. While the principle of entitlement to vote is a central pillar of the Canadian electoral system, so too are mechanisms to ensure the integrity of electoral procedure.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Supreme+Court+minority+defended+integrity+elections/7466673/story.html#ixzz2Ay6vC94n

How should we respond to the SCOC? If we have decided that it has lowered itself beyond redemption with this ruiling, what do we do? You know, "Well, it's the highest court in our land. Whether we agree or disagree is irrelevant. We have to abide by it." 

Rubbish.

When it becomes obvious that the system is corrupt, the system has no legitimacy. A prime minister who doesn't respect the will of the majority in Parliament doesn't get respect for his own majority later. Respecting the will of the majority in Parliament is obligatory for our system and harper decided of his own free will to disregard his obligation. Even if his majority wasn't based on fraud (which it is), harper had already renounced his right to our respecting the source of his legitimacy.

An elections watchdog that can't conduct an election (see: "Etobicoke-Centre") has no business overseeing elections. An elections watchdog that refuses to investigate allegations of voter fraud cannot tell us to withhold our criticisms and denunciations of electoral fraud. It has decided to remove itself from the debate. It has made itself irrelevant.

A Supreme Court justice who decides to rule according to partisan or corrupt lines is a Supreme Court justice who has relinquished his or her right to be respected. You're not supposed to disregard laws to support your masters. We're all supposed to be equal before the law and the laws are to be upheld the same way for everyone In civil disputes over allegations of fraud, to criminal cases involving murder, to political cases over disputed elections and the meaning of democracy, the law is supposed to be the law. We don't have that anymore.

 

We can acquiesce to this garbage as they did in the USA ever since Bush vs. Gore, and fall to the level where we can be targeted for assassination for leading protests against the criminality of Wall Street, or we can genuinely fight now, to restore the integrity of our political and legal systems.

 

In other news, Michael Sona, the harpercon dimwit who made an ass of himself in the Guelph riding only to be subsequently tagged as "Pierre Poutine" the robocall fraudster, says that he won't be the fall-guy for someone higher up in the organization who he refuses to name. Sona is now well aware what vile scum the Conservative Party of Canada contains (for the simple reason that it is now his own ox that is being gored) but he must be afraid of retribution if he actually names names.

Asked why he's speaking out now, Sona said he had been willing to wait out a month or two, but it's been 18 months since the investigation started and eight months since his name was floated.
"Quite frankly, I've realized at this point Elections Canada is not going to clear my name for me. No one else is going to do that. I'm the only person that can do that right now," he said.

What it shows me is that Canadian democracy is a sick farce. Case in point:

A spokesman for the Conservative Party said he would not comment on specifics so as not to compromise the investigation.

Yes. The two-year ongoing "investigation" behind which nothing can be discussed and during which evidence can be destroyed. And they expect us to respect them!