Thursday, October 25, 2012

Supreme court upholds Conservatives' election fraud. Welcome to Kazakhstan

Ex-Liberal MP in Etobicoke Centre loses court challenge, Conservative Ted Opitz keeps seat.

Four of the Supreme Court judges restored 59 of the 79 votes that a lower court judge threw out, preserving Opitz's narrow 2011 federal election victory.
Former Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj had challenged the results based on apparent voting irregularities at several polling stations on election day and an Ontario court judge ruled in his favour last May. Wrzesnewskyj lost to Opitz by 26 votes.
But the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the entitlement to vote cannot be annulled due to procedural errors and that there was a lack of evidence that most of the discarded ballots came from voters who were not qualified to vote.
Opitz immediately issued a statement thanking the court for its "carefully reasoned decision."
"As the court decision confirmed, a fair election took place, the result was clear, was then confirmed on a recount and the result has now been endorsed by the Supreme Court of Canada," the statement reads.
"Fifty-two thousand people in Etobicoke Centre followed the rules, cast their ballots and today had their democratic decision upheld," Opitz said.
Wrzesnewskyj found a silver lining, despite losing his case.
"The next federal election will be run very differently," he said. "That means we're all ahead. We've all won."

Split decision on voting irregularities

The majority of the judges has a set a high bar for anyone wanting to contest an election result due to failures in record keeping.
They made it clear that that the onus is on the applicant to have very solid proof – proof that might be difficult to establish – that anything went wrong.
On the matter of missing registration certificates, the Supreme Court found that it was up to Wrzesnewskyj to prove that they were missing and the fact they cannot be found is not sufficient evidence.
They were satisfied that the certificates could have been "misplaced" because the deputy returning officer said that she "thought" they had been completed. If that sounds vague, the majority said, it is because she was trying to recall something that happened eight months earlier.
The only irregularities the court would accept were instances where there was no voter's signature on the registration certificate. The signature is supposed to be the voter's statutory declaration that he or she is over 18 and a Canadian citizen.
However, the court did allow registration certificates where an elections official has signed instead of the voter, reasoning that the official "would not put his signature on completely filled out registration forms without being satisfied of the voters’ entitlement to vote," so 10 votes were restored.
The majority also restored the ballots that had been negated due to errors in vouching, which occurs when a voter has no ID and someone swears as to their identity. There were no errors, said the court, only errors in record keeping. Even though vouching paperwork was missing, the court found that initials were enough to prove that the person doing the vouching was a relative of the voter being vouched for.
The majority also dismissed Wrzesnewskyj's cross appeal, which centred on the fact that many voters cast their ballots in the wrong polling division.
The judges said definitively that, "Voting in the wrong polling division had no effect on the result of the election … it is not comparable to voting in the incorrect riding."

Chief justice dissented

What is surprising is that three of the judges reached an opinion that is almost diametrically opposed to the four in the majority.
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and Justices Louis LeBel and Morris Fish found that 65 of the 79 ballots discarded by the lower court judge should have been tossed.
The minority judges took a much harsher view of procedural errors. However, the majority leaned hard towards the entitlement of every qualified Canadian to vote.
The daunting logistics of running a federal election seemed to influence the majority judges.
"A federal election is only possible with the work of tens of thousands of Canadians who are hired across the country for a period of a few days, or, in many cases, a single 14-hour day," they wrote.
There will always be irregularities, was the conclusion.
The court also found that "annulling an election would disenfranchise not only the persons whose votes were disqualified, but every elector who voted in the riding."
In a statement, interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae thanked Wrzesnewskyj for his "dedication to upholding the integrity of Canada’s electoral system," calling his faith in democracy "nothing short of remarkable."
"In addition to the split ruling today, there still exists a disturbing trend of irregularities and reports of election fraud stemming from the 2011 general election," Rae said in the statement. "We cannot forget that Canadians across the country were deprived of their right to vote through a co-ordinated attack on our democracy.
"There is still much work to be done and many questions to be answered in order to restore our confidence in Canada's electoral institutions," he said.
Read Kady O'Malley's liveblog from the Supreme Court:

13 comments:

Dr Mike said...

And who was it that appointed the majority of those judges????

Hmmmmmm.....

Dr Mike Popovich

Brent Fullard said...

SCC = WTF

The Rat said...

Liberals complaining about judges - my how the worm has turned.

Anonymous said...

There was no other option. Every riding in every election will have irregularities.
Every close race regardless of who won would be challanged if the court ruled otherwise.

Dr Mike said...

Rat

What Liberals??

Dr Mike Popovich

Ps----Get some cojones man & use a real name.

Anonymous said...

My god you guys whine alot.
Just because you keep saying something is true doesnt make it true, the SCC just proved that.
Some one wins, someone doesnt. It went all the way to our highest court and your still whining about the results.

The Rat said...

Hey "Dr. Mike", I hope you are more clued in to things medical than you are political 'cause this blog is a Liberal blog and part of the Liblogs aggregator - hence "Liberals".

As for a real name, did you just find this interweb thingy? Pseudonyms are rather common here and carry on a long and storied tradition of political writings under pseudonyms. See Benjamin Franklin's many pseudonyms, or "Publius" used by several prominent US politicians when they wrote the Federalist Papers during the American revolutionary period. In Britain there is an incredibly rich pantheon of political writers and satirists who used pseudonyms. The tradition is both one to allow the argument to stand on its own, untainted by the writer, and to protect the writer from attacks by the government or political rivals.

I doubt posting my real name makes any difference to the validity of my arguments but it most certainly would make it easier for the nutjobs to harass me. I think I'll continue to use my utterly original and brilliantly ironic pseudonym, thank you very much, despite your thoughtful and heartfelt advice on the matter.

Dr Mike said...

"nutjobs to harass you"...

Huh.

I have posted with my name since I have been posting anything on the internet---political , restaurant reviews , whatever. I usually use my address as well.

I have never been harassed by anyone other than anonymous posters.

Go figure.

If it`s worth saying , it must be signed---that is why Letters to the Editor must be signed or they will not be accepted.

Anyway Rat , have a good day.

Dr Mike Popovich

PS---FYI , I have no party affiliation at present---still weighing my options.

Anonymous said...

Hey Mr " THE RAT " I did you a favor, I gave you a name Mr Tareht, God knows where your from ?
I voted Conservative my whole life, until the Conservative Party stunk the joint in 2006.
This is another butcher political appointed Judge fiasco ! Great article Kady !!

Hey, Mr Tareht otherwise known as The RAT, here at the CAITI blog we do not hide behind blackout documents or names, just discuss the facts upfront and provide solutions !

Joey

Brent Fullard said...

Ha Ha Ha On the question of posting anonymously, it would appear that The Rats are running from the ship.

Even that Rat, Dean Del Mastro thinks The Rat should not be permitted to be posting anonymously:

Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro says anonymous commenters on news articles should be forced to identify themselves

Oct 26, 2012

THE CANADIAN PRESS

Dean Del Mastro, MP for Peterborough, suggests the government should go after anonymous commenters online in an effort to combat cyber-bullying.

Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro suggests that the government should look at ending anonymous comments on news articles as a way to combat online bullying.

“One of the best ways to end on-line and electronic bullying, libel and slander would be to force people posting hurtful comments to properly identify themselves,” Del Mastro wrote Thursday on Facebook. “This morning I read comments on a news story posted on an electronic news publication, many of them could only be described as hateful rants. The common denominator is that none of them identified the person that wrote them; this strikes me as something that parliament should address.”

The overwhelming majority of news websites in Canada allow for anonymous comments on their stories and the ability to remain anonymous has long been a central tenet of online culture.

Not surprisingly the Internet struck back against the formerly boisterous MP who has largely been shoved aside by the Harper government since allegations of election improprieties.

Del Mastro’s Facebook post generated a number of comments, many of them slamming his stance as anti-conservative and unenforceable.

“Dean: Current federal law allows for prosecution of libellous statements online. Court orders may be granted for discovery of those libelling. Also, current hate crime legislation allows the same, so your problems are already solved. If you have any other questions about federal law, you can always check with your MP,” wrote Mark Nesbitt.

“This is anti-conservative, big government nonsense,” Mike Sloan added.

Del Mastro responded to the discussion, saying online comments have a a “very real impact in society.”

“Whether it’s political discourse or other forms of debate or conversation, spewing vitriolic hatred electronically under the cover of anonymity is wrong and cowardly and there is a very real impact on many in society. I’m concerned by what I’m seeing,” he said.

Dr Mike said...

Del Mastro : "under the cover of anonymity is wrong and cowardly"

Hey Dean isn`t this similar to hiding the facts behind the income trust decision behind the cover of the black magic marker under the supposed guise of "National Security"??

Dr Mike Popovich

Brent Fullard said...

Good parallel Dr. Mike. Don't you just love the hypocrisy of these CONs.

Meanwhile, notice that Del Mastro is only speaking of preventing anonymous comments on news articles and not blogs etc.

The obvious intent is that since the CONs control the press, they need to also control those who comment against the controlled press accounts of the day's affairs. Meanwhile conbots are free to harass Canadians on sites like Garth Tuners' etc.

Anonymous said...

This is the Dean Del Mastro " the essence of the market " Dean Del Mastro. So shareholders of Progress Energy Trust get ravaged in 2006. Then lose a distribution income asset because some sovereign owned enterprise comes and takes Progress private because of a government created tax arbitrage. So poor me ! I'm suppose to open the newspaper read the article, cry and hope something better comes along ? Ah....I think I got it "it is the essence of the market " according to Dean Del Mastro " JC