Thursday, April 14, 2011

Why Did the harpercons Disrupt the Guelph University Special Poll?

Canada has a pretty good thing with Elections Canada. We have a first-past-the-post electoral system and some regions and rural ridings enjoy far more proportional strength than they should, but within the confines of that system, thanks to Elections Canada and paper ballots, we have free and fair elections in Canada.

So I'd be pretty surprised if there were, in fact, anything illegal about the special poll for students at Guelph University today. I'd be pretty surprised to hear that there actually were partisan materials littering the polling site.

Knowing how "conservatives" operate, it's one of two things going on here: 1) Michael Sona is a total moron and jumped to conclusions because no advanced polls were announced by Elections Canada, or 2) [and this is more likely] the harpercons are a pretty shallow, thuggish group of people. For them, campaigns are a sport and the goal is to win by hook or by crook. They've imported the Rovian tactics of electoral shenanigans (to the extent that our voting system allows this, which isn't very far) and their goal wasn't so much to actually disrupt the poll as to create openings from which to sow doubt upon the integrity of the results.

Then, like whining, snivelling, lying brats, they can say "We were robbed! The Coalition cheated!!!"

And one more nail is hammered into Canadian democracy's coffin.

5 comments:

Orwell's Bastard said...

Were they wearing Brooks Brothers shirts?

thwap said...

The reports are inconclusive.

Galen said...

The same guelph students who organized the "vote mob" (see first link below) got the President of the University of Guelph, Alastair Summerlee to get on board to promote student voting. The got him to pledge to paint his face in an "Avatar" Summerlee stunt if 1500 student committed to making an informed vote (see second link). Some of the student organizers also painted their faces Avatar style and got people to write little signs like "I just voted" etc.

So what I don't get is how promoting youth voting and painting your face is compromising our election. I mean they painted their faces BLUE, the Cons can't even say they were painting on opposing party colours.


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/video-guelph-students-demonstrate-to-promote-youth-voting/article1970572/?from=1986324

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=164082363650532

thwap said...

So far it looks like this was entirely a fabricated scandal, created by the harpercons to deliberately (and falsely) discredit our electoral system.

what fucking assholes.

marie said...

What happened in Quelph for the students was legit and they were special votes for those who could not be in their provinces and ridings in advance polls and Election Day. It is clearly legit.

My husband and I will not be in BC for either the advance polls and on May 2nd so we were able to vote on special ballots by EC and we were properly checked IDs and proper address which we signed and then given two envelopes and one ballot to write the name of our candidate, place it an envelope, seal it and then put it into another envelope with our poll numbers and signatures, the date on it and then that too sealed and dropped into a proper polling box.

I have worked the polls in the past and everything was done according to election Canada rules and there was never any improper material or colors lying about. One simply has to visit election Canada to read about these special votes to make sure that every Canadian can place their votes in any election. And yes thwap, this was definitely a fabricated scandal and you know the results show that the Cons were not able to stop the voted from being counted