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When it comes to election tactics, Professor Neil Nevitte makes a distinction between underhanded and illegal. (Bigstock photo)

Examining the robo-call controversy

茄子直播 political scientist discusses election irregularities

There is a lot of speculation and finger pointing surrounding the current robo-call election controversy. 茄子直播 News spoke to Neil Nevitte, a professor of political science, to help sort out the details and find out what鈥檚 at stake. Nevitte is an expert in public opinion, voting, value change, and the problems associated with transitional elections.

I understand it鈥檚 not unusual for political campaigns to engage in underhanded tactics. What makes the robo-call controversy different?

Not unusual at all. Campaigns are tough.

I suppose that one issue in this case is the distinction between underhanded and illegal. My sense is that we do not yet have enough hard information to determine whether any laws have been broken. That determination has to be led by the police in conjunction with Elections Canada.

Should the government call a public inquiry?

There is a lot of speculation, which comes as no surprise at all. Picking over the entrails of an election, assigning blame, finger pointing, all of this is not so unusual.

But any investigation has to be able to go well beyond innuendo; the priority has to be the determination of the facts. Who did what? Was it illegal? If there were any deviations from the law, were they at the behest of others? Who? And so on.

If there is an inquiry, how would it help resolve this issue?

First there is the question of the legal resolution.

The bottom line here, I suppose, is whether there is any evidence of a smoking gun that points to orchestrated irregularities. I have not seen that evidence. To my mind, that is not at all clear, and it will in the first instance be for the police and the courts to decide.

But then there is the broader question of how the issue might be resolved in the court of public opinion. That is an entirely different question. Scandals have a way of reappearing in subsequent election campaigns. Voters can and do punish politicians even if politicians are held blameless by inquiries.

Recall that the Gomery inquiry exonerated Paul Martin from any role in the sponsorship scandal it was investigating. But that did not stop voters from punishing the Liberal party at the ballot box. And the Liberals paid for it dearly.

If the allegations about the robo-call controversy turn out to be true:

  • What does this mean for Canada and the electoral process?

Quite aside from the allegations of deliberately deceiving citizens to depress voter turnout -- a serious claim -- one worry is that issues of this sort feed public cynicism about the political process. Citizens need to be confident about the performance of their institutions; they have a right to expect that.

  • You鈥檝e worked to bring fair elections to post-conflict regions around the world. What changes will Canada have to make to ensure future elections are fair?

Yes, I鈥檝e worked on cases of election fraud for about the last 18 years in various elections around the world. Determinations about the 鈥渇airness and freeness鈥 of elections turns out to be a fairly tricky business, particularly in deeply divided post-conflict situations.

In those settings it is routine almost for parties who lose elections to call 鈥渇oul play.鈥 But demonstrating foul play beyond 鈥渞easonable doubt,鈥 as it were, is hard to do. One problem is that people seem to have some sort of error free, ideal election in their heads and they want to interpret any deviation from that ideal as some sort of evidence of foul play.

Often, it is not. No election in any country has ever been completely error free.

The fact is that human beings make mistakes. Not all election officials are well trained. People administering elections get sick, or don鈥檛 show up to the right polling station. These 鈥渆rrors鈥 are not prima facie evidence of foul play.

Deciphering whether there are real problems entails sorting through different kinds of irregularities. Were the irregularities 鈥渞andom,鈥 indicating straightforward human error? Or were they systematic?

If systematic, did the corpus of 鈥渆rrors鈥 work to the benefit of one political party over the others? Did the cumulative effect of these errors have a material impact on the outcome of the election? And these issues aren鈥檛 limited to Election Day activities.

Various kinds of foul play can be set in motion months before Election Day. This is why we look at the role of the media, probe human rights violations, investigate reports of intimidation, audit voter registration lists, investigate campaign spending and finance and so on.

To be sure, Canadian elections are not entirely free from errors, but we typically do not face those kinds of problems that, sadly, are common throughout much of the world.

  • What are the anticipated consequences for the person or persons involved?

We won鈥檛 know that for some time, I expect.

  • What will likely happen to the election results of the ridings in question?

That, too, is an open question. Once the facts are established, all of this will become clearer.

 

 

 

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