Paging Poll Wonks!

Here's my reaction on Election Night 2011, titled 'Totally Fucked'.

I can barely type for tears. Thanks, to vote-splitters, conscience voters. Thanks. Canada is now Tea Party North.

The comments on that post and my (dimming) memory indicate that there was a fair amount of shock at the result. How wrong did pollsters get it?

Or, to put it another way: did pollsters more or less accurately reflect voter intentions MINUS criminal skulduggery?

So I went looking for immediate reactions. Here's ThreeHundredEight from May 3, 2011:

Well, at least I got the order of the parties right.

Clearly, the final projection was wrong. It under-estimated both the Conservatives and the New Democrats and over-estimated the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois. While I was not alone in making this error, I humbly recognize that of all the projections mine was among the worst.

Of the 308 ridings in the country, ThreeHundredEight.com correctly called 234 of them. That's an accuracy rate of 76.0%, which is absolutely unacceptable.

However, it was not the seat projection model that failed. The seat projection model actually performed very well - or would have had the popular vote projection model not missed the mark so completely.
. . .

I should be clear that the polls were not terribly inaccurate. They were actually quite good in pegging the support levels of the Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Québécois. But they under-estimated the Conservatives, arguing for a strong minority rather than a relatively strong majority government. This was especially problematic in British Columbia, Ontario, and Atlantic Canada. On the other hand, full marks go to the pollsters in unpredictable Quebec. They were all very close to the actual result.

Hm. Of the 92 ridings with 'hoax phone calls' The Sixth Estate had listed as of yesterday, I count 74 in British Columbia, Ontario, and Atlantic Canada, where Conservative strength was under-estimated by pollsters, but where allegations of manipulation or suppression abound.

Here's another post-mortem from May 4, 2011.

Stephen Harper achieved his long-sought Conservative majority last night, leaving many of us gobsmacked and dumbstruck.

Pundits quoted there blame vote-splitting.

KICKER: There's also this:

Now Harper (3 May) tells us that in majority, he will adopt a no-surprises approach to government, with no radical shifts in policy: “One thing I’ve learned in this business is that surprises are generally not well received by the public and so we intend to move forward with what Canadians understand about us and I think what they’re more and more comfortable with.”

No surprises, indeed. Long-form census, 'Royal' everything, OAS. I could go on.

I am no poll wonk. But it would be très cool if a number cruncher could take a look at this stuff.

Aside: From my trip down memory lane just now, it is QUITE remarkable how many contemporary reports of 'dirty tricks' were noted by us -- mostly by deBeauxOs. Viz today's Creekside.

h/t @stignasty for the threehundredeight link.

'Hello? Do You Have Frat Bois in a Can?'

One thing in what may be the new iteration of the In and Out fraud has been bugging me inordinately.

Why did so many RMG invoices -- of varying amounts -- end in '.01'?

Found the answer.

But more than half of the campaigns received the exact same bill from RMG. In total, 49 ridings across the country, all with varying numbers of electors, paid the call centre $15,000 (the 16 Quebec ridings included in the list were charged an extra penny).

I smell conservative frat boi humour of the sort that would find voter suppression school hilarious.

The conversation that followed was deeply disturbing to Fryer. In a question and answer session, attendees discussed voter suppression tactics. They talked about posing as a member of another party, and about making rude calls at inconvenient times as a strategy to get the supporter of another party to not go out and vote for their candidate. The instructors detailed different kinds of suppression calls, and how these tactics are borrowed from the U.S. Republican Party.

According to Fryer, "the mood of the meeting was that this is war and that anything goes."

Including charging Quebecers an extra penny.

Har-de-har-har.

How Many Links to a Smoking Gun?

Maurice Vellacott had a little chat with The Hill Times and it wasn't about abortion.

But when Stevie Peevie gets a load of this, I think he'll open the Abortion Debate all by himself to distract the brainless big-mouth.

Further to Blame Game Move 5 (blame Elections Canada), Vellacott explains that EC sends voter lists to all parties, once early on in the campaign, and again three days before the election. Note: these lists do NOT contain the all-important telephone numbers.

Then what happens, Maurice?

Mr. Vellacott disclosed the Conservative Party’s central campaign matches the telephone numbers of identified voters, from a range of sources including electoral district information, with the Elections Canada voter lists.

“I don’t know how it works with everybody, but for the most part, because it’s such a massive job in such a short period of time, I would suspect that with most parties, I can’t speak for others, but I suspect it comes from the national party office, you know attempting to do that,” Mr. Vellacott said

“They’ve got all these 308 ridings across the country, but they do the match up for us. We don’t do it ourselves, in terms of the addition [of phone numbers]. I don’t know how it works for others, the new dump of stuff as it kind of progresses through the campaign and then trying to marry those numbers, that’s all done by our national office, at least within the Conservative Party.”

Liberals told The Hill Times on Tuesday their party does not maintain central control over campaign voting lists and voter identification numbers, and a senior NDP official, Brad Lavigne, recently told CBC’s The House that NDP electoral districts maintain their own voter lists.

Mr. Vellacott said he believes the Conservative Party manages the lists and matches voter identification telephone numbers centrally because it has the capacity and the expertise that the job requires.

Given Vellacott's intellectual capacity, perhaps this is just a kindness on CPC's part and done only for him.

We await further clarfication.

From the same article, an interesting tidbit:

Elections Canada confirmed to The Hill Times on Tuesday that for the first time in a federal election a representative of one of the recognized parties, the Conservative Party, had before the election requested that the initial voter list given to the parties at the beginning of the campaign include the location of polling sites. In response, Elections Canada provided the information to the Conservative Party and the other recognized parties.

Chief Electoral Marc Mayrand cautioned about the unusual request in a comprehensive report to Parliament last August.

Hence the warning from EC to parties NOT to give out polling station information.

“Because a polling site can be replaced by another at the last minute, and to ensure that electors always have access to the most accurate information regarding their location, Elections Canada indicated to political parties that the list supplied should only be used for internal purposes and that parties should not direct electors to polling sites,” the report said.

“Political parties were invited to refer electors to the Elections Canada website, their local Elections Canada office or their voter information card for locations, to prevent electors from being directed to incorrect polling sites. Some political parties did not comply with this request.”

It was the Contempt Party of Canada that requested the polling station locations, eh? For the first time, eh?

So, to recap. At least one Con says the telephone numbers were added by the national campaign and that the lists were centrally controlled. Said telephone numbers were used to misinform voters about the location of their polling stations -- locations requested by the Contempters.

Not much, I agree. But the links are there. We've gotta keep at it.

Gotcha!

As my long-suffering friends and relations will tell you, I'm kinda tedious on the subject of how the Internet is changing politics.

Well, look who agrees. Antonia Z.

Call it the hive mind, swarm intelligence, maybe collective consciousness.

Really, what’s happening online with the so-called “robo-call” scandal is all about crowdsourcing the story.

Posts and comments on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, alternative websites and even corporate media are bouncing off each other, adding to the mass of allegations of election wrongdoing by the Conservative party.

And it's not just what's happening now.

She pointedly points out that bloggers have been on this since the minute the polls closed, citing the Essential Alison and in particular, her blogpost on the margin of victory from May 5, 2011.

Continuing on with how the story is now being amplified, she quotes -- ooooo! -- DJ!'s own deBeauxOs.

For example, when news of Elections Canada’s investigation of the “deceptive robo-calls” hit the headlines, it took over Twitter.

“Those of us who had tried to flag these U.S.-styled tactics (last year) responded with tweets linking to previous news stories and our blogs,” says Ottawa blogger DeBeauxOs of Dammit Janet.

Each fed off the other and boom. The story exploded.

And the feeding continues. Antonia has the grace -- a substance lacking in most MSM stenographers -- to credit the indefatigable Sixth Estate for his excellent ongoing compilation of reports and commentary thereon.

There is a quibble from Alice Funke of the Pundits' Guide. She says that all this yammering on the Tubz may be 'muddying the waters'.

Um. No. We are propelling the War Canoe.

Funke worries that muddying and confusion is playing into the Stevie Peevie's evil plans.

Plan? This is planned?

Ha. The Contempt Party is in full-bore panic and scramble mode. (See: Del Mastro, Dean, passim.)

The upshot? As my friend and relations can tell you -- Utopia.

OK. Not quite.

That said, [Internet strategist and broadcaster Jesse] Hirsh thinks this scandal is just the beginning of crowdsourcing political news.

“What we’re seeing is a clear marking of this is how things are now done, and this is how things will be done going forward,” he says.

“And this may even be the last major political scandal because the only lesson a politico can take from all of this is, you’re going to get caught.”

Unlikely. But the blogosphere and twitterverse will have a grand time hunting the evil-doers down.

Legacy

The Harper Government is well on its way to being the Government of Firsts.

First, contempt of Parliament.

The contempt finding is unique in Canadian history. In a wider context, it is the first time that a government in the 54-member Commonwealth of Nations has been found in contempt of Parliament.

This morning on The House, former Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley was asked what the penalty for electoral fraud is. He said, 'a fine of $5,000 and/or a prison term of up to five years'. Asked whether anyone had ever gone to prison, he said not to his knowledge. But then added: 'But there's a first time for everything'.

There's a legacy for ya, Stevie.

ADDED: Niles asked in the comments but others may have the same question: Who orders an investigation?

As I understand it from this morning's radio program, the Commissioner of Elections Canada orders an investigation by Elections Canada staff who then take the findings to the Director of Public Prosecutions, currently this guy, who decides whether there is a case to bring. Note date of appointment. Yup, 2007, post-Harper.

RoboScam: RackNine Paid in US Dollars?

Right now there are more questions than answers in the RoboScam election fraud affair. (I had no idea we [ok, deBeauxOs] here at DAMMIT JANET! had been on this for so loooong.)

Here is my question for now.

Why were some RackNine invoices either billed in or paid in US currency?

It's an Edmonton company working a Canadian election.

Have a look at the invoices, receipts, and emails.

The invoice to Leon Benoit's campaign has a note about the amount in equivalent Canadian dollars.

Jason Kenney's invoice has a scribble at bottom near the total that looks like 'US $'.

Yet noted on the RackNine invoices:

Unless otherwise agreed in writing by the supplier all invoices are payable on or before the due date noted above, in the currency of the invoice drawn on a bank based in Canada or by such other method as agreed in advance by RackNine Inc.

The RackNine receipts specify CAD beside the amount, but invoices just say 'Total (in $)'.

Do Conservatives love the US so much they prefer to use its currency?

Or was it an attempt to limit Elections Canada's jurisdiction?

And more questions: Alison has questions about connections between Campaign Research and deniability in general and the robocalls in particular.

USian-Style Dirty Tricks

My goodness. Actual indictments for voter suppression.

Two top aides to former Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R) were indicted Friday for trying to suppress Democratic voter turnout by ordering misleading phone calls that discouraged voters from going to the polls. The Baltimore Sun reports that Paul Schurick, Ehrlich’s communications director, and Julius Henson, a longtime GOP operative, directed this deceptive robocall campaign targeting the state’s black voters during last year’s gubernatorial campaign.

(Erhlich lost anyway.)

Sound familiar?

Elections Canada investigates.

"Your concern about press reports of "robo-calls" providing false information regarding polling stations is of a different character. Your remarks will be considered in the context of an inquiry ongoing with regard to calls of this nature that have been reported to this office."

Well, if Merkin-style dirty-tricks are gonna come to Canada, let us hope for similar prosecutions here.

Yeah. Right.

Remind me, where are we with that In and Out Scandal?

Oh, yeah.

On February 24th, 2011, 4 senior Conservative Party members were charged in the In and Out Scandal under the Elections Canada Act with overspending over $1 million dollars in the 2006 election including allegations that Conservative election expense documents submitted to Elections Canada were "false or misleading" and attempted to fraudulently gain almost $1 million dollars in refunds from taxpayers. Senator Doug Finley, (the party's campaign director in 2006 and 2008, and the husband of Human Resources Development Minister Diane Finley), Senator Irving Gerstein, Michael Donison (former national party director) and Susan Kehoe (who has served as an interim party executive director) all face 3 months in jail, $1000 in fines or both.

Are We Winning a Little?

An interesting and somewhat hopeful view of the election.

Since the economic crisis in 2008, Bay Street has craved a majority—either Liberal or Tory—to force through an austerity agenda, while ordinary people have wanted an alternative to Harper. These forces have ripped the Liberals apart: their right-wing base gave Harper his majority (endorsed by nearly every mainstream newspaper and media outlet in Canada), consolidating the corporate vote in one party, while those on the left ditched “strategic voting” and voted NDP.

Harper’s stronger regime in Parliament obscures the steady erosion of the combined Liberal/Tory vote as result of what has happened outside Parliament. In 2000, the combined corporate vote was 78 per cent. After the anti-capitalist mobilization against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) in Quebec City in 2001, the G8 protests in Calgary in 2002, and the historic demonstrations against the war in Iraq in 2003, the combined corporate vote fell even more: to 66 per cent in 2004 and 2006.

With growing anger over the war and the start of the economic crisis, it slipped down to 64 per cent in 2008. Now, after three years of austerity and growing resistance—from Egypt to Wisconsin—the combined corporate vote has fallen to 58.5 per cent. Meanwhile, Parliament’s disconnect from ordinary people led many to continue voting with their feet: despite a higher turnout than last election, it was still the third lowest in Canadian history—another reason why Harper has a majority without a mandate.

It goes on to cite successful mass movements here and elsewhere. Predictably, it calls for more organizing and more activism.

Well, heck, it made me feel (a little) better.

Poisonous Partisanship

The despair is wearing off. And the anger is setting in. Shared, it seems, by several.

In the comments to last night's Totally Fucked post, Scotian writes:

The Dippers placed beating the Libs as more important than Harper and got what they were after, and in the process proved they are a party that places their own power and expediency ahead of their self proclaimed principles, in other words they are no better now than the Lib party they decried for this kind of behaviour for decades. However, somehow I doubt most Dippers will be willing/able to acknowledge this fundamental truth, how they can be so delusional as to believe otherwise I do not know but then I've never been a partisan of ANY party or leader despite the claims of many (especially Dippers) to the contrary.

And oh, look, Scotian has been saying it for ages. Dated May 4, 2010:

I have been saying since before Martin was beaten that Harper was the greatest threat to Canadian democracy out there because of his contempt for how we govern ourselves. I said back then that stopping him should be the most important thing for anyone of any progressive bent regardless of where they stood on the spectrum, but was I listened to? Nope, I was called a Liberal shill and flack by both right and left. I said back then that if the NDP really were a principles first party as they always had been prior to Layton's leadership they would have made common cause with the Libs to block Harper's rise to power and sustain Martin, that even a tired corrupt Liberal government under Martin would be less damaging than a Harper led government. Again, time proved me right in spades.

And you're right again, Scotian.

That's why it's over for me and Jack. And that was before I found out what a thorough-going flake he is.

Ruthless, relentless partisanship -- on all sides -- has fucked up this country but good.

Oh, and Jack? The Disaffected Lib has a few words for you.

Totally Fucked

I can barely type for tears. Thanks, to vote-splitters, conscience voters. Thanks. Canada is now Tea Party North.

Dipper Dippiness

Back here I threw the ProgBlogosphere into a tizz by saying I was going to vote Liberal. Then I took it back and said I was voting fringe.

But today when I went to the poll, I voted, as usual, for the Dipper, Oliva Chow in this riding.

Had I seen this first, I'd have returned to the fringe plan.



Really. Jack and Olivia are BOTH Trekkies.

(Now, I'll have pissed off the Dippers again and the Trekkies. A good day for a humble blogger.)

Election Eve Fun with Wiki

For a couple of minutes, that was the opening of the Wiki entry for Julian Fantino.

If you can't read it: ' . . a retired police official, a douchebag who leaked the information about Jack Layton's involvement in a bawdy-house bust, and the elected member of the Parliament of Canada. . .

Alas, someone was quick to fix it.

But, YAY, JJ the Genius found it in the revision history.

(I know. Despite years now of blogging, there is much for TechnDolt to master.)

In related news, the #elxn41 hashtag has been conquered today by humourless, deluded ideologues preaching to their various choirs.

End the Harper Circus

Another clever, well-done, creative anti-Harper video.



Vote strategically.

Daddy Harper

There are some wonderfully creative election videos zipping around the Toobz. Like this one, answering (sorta) the series of 'It's Over, Steve' made by women all over the country.



The anti-Harper forces are smart, funny, and creative. And we totally get this whole democracy thing.

Vote strategically.

Less Painful Than a Boot to the Head

Regular readers are no doubt aware that we at DJ! do not care for Stephen Harper. The reckless vandalism he and his ignorant gang have inflicted on our democracy -- with a mere minority -- has been stunning.

The Fucking Useless Opposition® have been, well, fucking useless.

Pollsters, pundits, and now ReformaTory 'insiders' say that a Harper majority is now out of reach.

We are not comforted.

In fact, we are still scared shitless.

Oh. Look. This guy, one of the most respected constitutional scholars in Canada is scared shitless too. It's 3 minutes and 13 seconds long. Not a big time commitment.



If you know anyone who is planning not to vote or who is planning to vote blindly, please send them this link and ask them to invest 3 minutes and 13 seconds in watching it.

Maybe also send along this link to a guide to strategic voting. You could also input your friend's postal code and send the resulting link. You know, just to be helpful.

Seriously, when Professor Peter Russell is afraid, we should all be very afraid.

Prof. Russell 'hopes and prays' we can save our parliamentary democracy.

Or as someone said on Twitter this morning, 'Voting is a lot less painful than a boot to the head'.

Stevie Peevie, Behind the Schemes Scenes

The top comment at YouTube:

sometimes...the subconscious can be a b*tch...eh Harpo?

h/t Enough Harper

Strategic Voting Link-Fest

In Canada during every election, strategic voting comes up, with people arguing passionately on either side.

Well, things are different this time. Strategic voting has never had the Internet and social media backing that it does now. Canadians are connected as never before and many of them clearly see the threats that a Harper majority represents.

And some people have been working for months to get ready for this.

A member of CRUSH, Michele MacKay, has been on it.

GREAT NEWS FOR STRATEGIC VOTING! I have just finished comparing both Catch 22 and Project Democracy riding by riding, and they have picked the same candidate in every single riding except one (Beauport-Limoilou.) The fact the two sites arrived at the exact same picks completely independently of the other proves they're solid: We can take them to the polls!

IMPORTANT NOTE: the riding projections are up to date on PD, but they are still in the process of updating their candidate picks. Meantime, look ONLY at the riding projections.

Both sites are recommending we check back in May before we go out to vote because things can still change in the last week.

Also, some are too close to call. Yet.

Other helpful sites include Election Prediction Project, which has 61 ridings too close to call.

ThreeHundredEight is tracking polls.

The CAW is following 50 key ridings.

And the ReformaTories are focussed -- when they're not focussed on the economy of course -- on 30 seats.

One more to round out this strategic voting link-fest: Swing 33 has identified 33 ridings where a financial donation could help tip the scales.

Final point: if you vote in one of these swinging ridings, wait until eday. Things change.

Divide the Right: Election Notes

Docter McVety is stamping his little feet again.

Stephen Harper’s refusal to reopen the abortion debate risks suppressing the Conservative vote, a leading voice of Canadian social conservatism says.

“There is just no energy out there,” Charles McVety, the evangelic leader and Christian activist, said in an interview. “Frankly, my fear for Stephen Harper is that being so overt standing against the pro-lifers, he risks not motivating Conservative voters.”

Mr. McVety noted the Conservatives lost 160,000 votes between the 2006 and 2008 elections. He blames Mr. Harper’s decision just before the 2008 campaign to block Conservative MP Ken Epps’s private member’s bill that would have made it a separate offence for killing a fetus when a pregnant woman was murdered.

And they haven't forgotten this session's failed sneaky abortion recriminalization attempt either, viz this thread at the Freaks.

So-cons are finally wising up.

Well, not all of them. A new thread over there has my FB friend Connie wondering about REAL Women and Canada Family Action.

So, why are these socon organizations pimping for Stephen Harper? Why are they are ignoring the fact that the Christian Heritage Party welcomes social conservatives, and that Stephen Harper keeps kicking them in the teeth?

Has someone promised them something? Do they know something the rest of us don't know? Or, do they just have masochistic tendencies? I'd love to know the answer to that.

It is confusing. One -- albeit MASSIVE -- force is chiding Harper, two other pretty powerful groups are backing him.

Hmmm. Christo-Fascists, masochism, hair shirts, self-flagellation. Connie may be onto something there.

(I've been a bad bunny. In the comments on the Globe piece, I've posted a link to the Christian Heritage Party a couple of times. Just doing my bit for strategic voting.)

On the other hand . . .

I might blame her.

There is no longer ANY prospect of a Conservative majority.

I join Mike Watkins in saying: Bullshit.

I Know Who I'm Gonna. . .

. . . blame.

Jack Layton is dismissing as "absurd" the idea that voting for the resurgent New Democrats could result in a Conservative majority government.

Really, Jack?

This is how Election Prediction Project sees things at the moment:

Conservative Party 119
Liberal Party 61
N.D.P. 29
Bloc 38
Too Close 61

Sixty-one seats too close to call.

Hanging in the balance: democracy.

Vote-splitting: absurd.

Vote strategically.