[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[crazy canuck]

Latest strangeness from Twitter - people insisting you should bring a pen to vote, so that someone doesn't erase your pencil mark.

Now to be fair a lot of people explaining the process, including scrutineers.  It's really almost impossible to have large-scale fraud in Canada's paper ballots.  But still sad this kind of thing is infecting us in Canada.

Agreed. I would also argue its almost impossible to have small scale fraud without it being detected. 

[Barrister]

Latest strangeness from Twitter - people insisting you should bring a pen to vote, so that someone doesn't erase your pencil mark.

Now to be fair a lot of people explaining the process, including scrutineers.  It's really almost impossible to have large-scale fraud in Canada's paper ballots.  But still sad this kind of thing is infecting us in Canada.

Agreed. I would also argue its almost impossible to have small scale fraud without it being detected. 

Small scale fraud is possible.

I remember doing scrutineer training for the Manitoba PCs decades ago.  Basically we were told that if a family member wheels out great-grandma to vote who is nearly comatose - just let it go.  Not worth the hassle.  (Nurses doing it en masse would be different).

Similarly, someone can attest who is not on the voter list.  Can certainly be fraudulent.

Neither is remotely likely to determine the outcome of a vote.  Attestations are marked separately in any event.

[crazy canuck]

Latest strangeness from Twitter - people insisting you should bring a pen to vote, so that someone doesn't erase your pencil mark.

Now to be fair a lot of people explaining the process, including scrutineers.  It's really almost impossible to have large-scale fraud in Canada's paper ballots.  But still sad this kind of thing is infecting us in Canada.

Agreed. I would also argue its almost impossible to have small scale fraud without it being detected. 

Small scale fraud is possible.

I remember doing scrutineer training for the Manitoba PCs decades ago.  Basically we were told that if a family member wheels out great-grandma to vote who is nearly comatose - just let it go.  Not worth the hassle.  (Nurses doing it en masse would be different).

Similarly, someone can attest who is not on the voter list.  Can certainly be fraudulent.

Neither is remotely likely to determine the outcome of a vote.  Attestations are marked separately in any event.

The grandmother being brought to a polling station is not a case of fraud. I suspect you and the other scrutineers were told not to intervene because if you did, you would have been on very weak legal ground and likely committing an act contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Code.

The person attesting to someone who is not eligible to vote could be fraud, or it could just be a mistake.  In any event it would be detected since all such attestations are compared against the list.  It is one of the reasons the official result takes a bit of time to be released.

[crazy canuck]

Some comments from the Globe regarding the Conservative platform

$34-billion in new spending and $75-billion in tax cuts over the next four years.

They would help fund these expenditures with $56-billion in spending reductions over the same period, the Conservatives say. More than 40 per cent of these savings, the party says, would come from one measure: cutting the use of government consultants. They say that would save $23-billion over four years.

The party's 2025 election platform, released Tuesday, also shows the Conservatives are betting that economic growth from their policies will generate significant tax revenue for the government.

They estimate by 2028-29 this would be more than $21-billion annually. These predictions come despite the fact that Canada is in the midst of a damaging trade war with the United States.

Spending cuts include ending funding for English-language Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, while preserving funding for the French-language Radio-Canada. They would also cut foreign aid, starting at $1.3-billion in cuts in the 2025-26 fiscal year and rising to $2.8-billion in cuts by 2028-29.

All the parties have put out platforms that do not account for what the Trump administration is doing and how that will impact our economy.  Nobody can forecast that with any degree of accuracy, so I am not sure why the Globe reporter picked that nit.

Cutting the use of consultants is probably the correct way to go.  But the math doesn't work if the Conservatives are assuming all of the cost of those fees will go straight to the bottom line.  The government will have to invest in recruiting people into government (and paying them) to do the work the consultants were doing.  There will be cost savings, but not the magnitude being projected in the platform.

Also, there are specialty skills that it still makes sense to contract out.  Legal services are a good example of that.  There are a number of cases where the DOJ contracts with external counsel to argue the cases in court.  IT is another example that comes to mind - although the pay system is a cautionary tale of how not to do it.

So, bottom line, the idea of realizing all those saving is not realistic.

And then there is the old Conservative chestnut of ending the CBC.  I really wish they would give that up and realize it is not a hill to die on.

The Conservatives are also promising to "never hike taxes" while in power unless a referendum allows.

The ghost of Preston Manning haunts the Conservatives still.  I wish they would just do their job and make the public policy decisions they were elected to make.

On defence spending, Mr. Poilievre is promising to hike military expenditures to the equivalent of 2 per cent of GDP by 2030. It's the same timeline being pledged by Liberal Leader Mark Carney. Also, like the Liberals, the Conservatives are promising a new system for more efficient military procurement.

Hope this actually happens.

Here is the rest of the article that does more comparison with the Liberal platform, and reaction from the Liberals.  Gifted link for Languish.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/519974dc5e28f762a87fb14c1570523f4fb873adfcfcb945043907ccc3c41650/VQ2VT42MDZDGPGSQCQGNVYUI5E/

[Barrister]

The grandmother being brought to a polling station is not a case of fraud. I suspect you and the other scrutineers were told not to intervene because if you did, you would have been on very weak legal ground and likely committing an act contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Code.

The person attesting to someone who is not eligible to vote could be fraud, or it could just be a mistake.  In any event it would be detected since all such attestations are compared against the list.  It is one of the reasons the official result takes a bit of time to be released.

You just can't help yourself - even when I'm basically agreeing with you, you have to try and point out why you think I'm wrong.

The ancient grandma - it could or could not be fraud.  It depends if grandma is able to make the choice for herself who to vote for or not.  But as I was told - it's just not worth challenging.  It can be a tough call, grandma may well have been a life-long PC/NDP voter and the grandkid is just following her wishes, and even if it's fraud it's of such a small scale it's not worth pursuing.

As for attestations - you can still vote even if you're not on the list.  You can vote even without ID.  So "comparisons to the list" is not really helpful.  What you need is someone with ID who attests as to your identity.  Theoretically that person without ID could also be a non-voter - proof of ID is needed, not proof of citizenship.

But there's just no evidence, ever, that such low-level fraud has ever meaningfully influenced an election.

I suppose if an election was ever that close in one riding, and the entire election depended on that one riding - Elections Canada might start chasing down people who attested and asking for proof of citizenship.

And there's absolutely no evidence people are erasing pencil marks on ballots.  In particular since ballots are placed into sealed boxes and only opened in the presence of scrutineers.

[crazy canuck]

You just can't help yourself - even when I'm basically agreeing with you, you have to try and point out why you think I'm wrong.

Well yes. When you say things that are wrong, I do think it is important to point it out and particularly in this political climate.  It is  inaccurate to suggest that only major fraud will be detected.  That feeds into the current right wing narrative that there is other undetected fraud which does occur.  And that is simply false.