Manipulating Election Results

"We're as concerned as anybody. Not just me, not just the prime minister - the tens of thousands of Conservative volunteers who worked hard to bring a majority victory, working in an ethical, law abiding way". It is a "despicable, reprehensible practise", he added, to attempt to suppress voting. That would be Guy Giorno, who acted as the Conservative Party campaign chair in the May 2011 general election.

And he has taken to centre stage to strenuously deny charges that the Conservative Party was behind the schemes that have been revealed by the media, and elevated by them to a drama of high dudgeon on behalf of the democracy that is Canada. "We took great pains and invested a lot of effort in trying to run, and running, a clean, ethical campaign that complied with all laws", Mr. Giorno told CTV's Question Period.

Former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he would not have lasted long in that position if he couldn't be trusted to act with the greatest propriety. His reputation as a responsible, reliable and honest broker seems unassailable, on the record. He insists that he "absolutely did not" authorize fraudulent calls to benefit the Conservatives during the election. People who know him, including Liberals, believe him.

"If you're running a good campaign, you don't have time for any shenanigans outside those three core activities of identification, persuasion and mobilization", he explained. He has not, it should be noted, shunted aside the reality of someone or some group of individuals having actually run roughshod over the election process.

"I wish Godspeed to Elections Canada and the RCMP investigators. We want them to get to the bottom of this and let's hope the full weight of the law is applied to any and all", he added.

To construe what had occurred as a covert, dirty-tricks formal plan on the part of the Conservatives to ensure they managed to attain a majority government this time around, is to insult the intelligence of those people who voted for a change in government. A secure one, giving the Conservatives their opportunity to govern as a majority.

The awkward ploy of convincing people to vote Conservative, or to arrive at the wrong place to vote is just too simplistic to have done the outstanding harm to the democratic process that outraged people demanding the process be revisited - spurred on by sensationalist news reportage - claim it to have been. Again, people are not that stupid that they would be so readily dissuaded.

Nor could the calls, said to be in the tens of thousands - affecting all parties; NDP, Liberal and Conservative alike - have conceivably resulted in an imbalance of sufficient proportions to unsettle the final tally. There are too many inconsistencies and too many mysteries involved in the several instances revealed, from authorization to planning; payment of the sizeable fees purportedly involved to the real potential of any of the parties revealed to having been involved.

This is not a clever way to achieve a goal, and were it to be revealed that a political party was actually involved in the campaign to mislead voters, it is not an event that could be casually set aside. It is, therefore, doubtful in the extreme that any of the parties themselves had a hand in the effort to manipulate the election results.