Demand Better

Whenever the opposition tried to raise "the democracy thing" during last spring's campaign, the electorate responded with a shrug. Contempt of parliament, the in-and-out scandal, Bev Oda's "not" problem...meh. People got temporarily worked up over prorogation, but that was more because the government was seen to be taking a 3-month vacation, not because they'd disrespected the institution of Parliament.

Maybe people assumed this was just par for the course and that all the parties were the same. Maybe they were right. Either way, there was little interest in "rising up".

So my suspicion is these revelations will be forgotten long before the 2015 election but, to me, this is far worse than any of the previously mentioned scandlettes:

Firm with Tory links traced to election day ‘robocalls’ that tried to discourage voters

Elections Canada has traced fraudulent phone calls made during the federal election to an Edmonton voice-broadcast company that worked for the Conservative Party across the country.

While the agency investigates, aided by the RCMP, the Conservatives are conducting an internal probe. A party lawyer is interviewing campaign workers to find who was behind the deceptive “robocalls.”

Elections Canada launched its investigation after it was inundated with complaints about election day calls in Guelph, Ont., one of 18 ridings across the country where voters were targeted by harassing or deceptive phone messages in an apparent effort to discourage Liberal supporters from voting.

In Guelph, a riding the Conservatives hoped to take from the Liberals, voters received recorded calls pretending to be from Elections Canada, telling them their polling stations had been moved. The calls led to a chaotic scene at one polling station, and likely led some voters to give up on voting.

Maher and McGregor go on to detail the investigation, in a fantastic piece of journalism I encourage everyone to read.

What strikes me most about the robocon scandal is that we're not talking about a grey area here. I get that the in-and-out scandal looked like nothing more than a bookkeeping error or the Tories exploiting a loophole. It was complicated. It was boring. It was impossible to explain to someone who wasn't tied up and forced to listen to you against their will.

But this...this is cut and dry. Voters were called on election day and lied to about where to vote, in an effort to prevent them from voting. There's still some investigating to do, but calls were made to ID'd voters in 18 ridings so it certainly sounds like this was more than one overzealous volunteer.

I'm skeptical this will be "Canada's Watergate", but to me this is absolutely reprehensible. The individuals involved should be punished to the full extent of the law, and if this is traced back to the top of the Conservative Party, hopefully there will be some kind of electoral fallout. As Stephen Harper himself would say, the electorate needs to demand better.