On the subject of strategic voting groups UPDATED
October 28, 2015
During the 2015 federal election campaign, strategic voting organizations sought to deliver rough justice to the Harper Conservatives with little regard for the lives and aspirations of candidates and campaign workers.
I watched a couple of B.C. strategic vote groups hang on to an NDP recommendation in a riding long past the point that it made sense. In the end the Liberal candidate won by over 3000 votes DESPITE the strategic voting endorsement of the NDP candidate, which seems to have been cast in stone back in August.
Many candidates and campaign workers devoted a year or more of their lives to this campaign. They did not expect their fates to lie in the inexpert whims of vigilantes. One might have thought strategic voting groups set out to fight against the use of arbitrary power, not perpetuate it.
Leadnow, one of the groups I vilified in the passage above, seems to have responded to criticism in their Election Report.
We should have provided more analysis – and possibly even advice – for the candidate recommendation process. We empowered vote pledge signers to make the final decision about whether to recommend a candidate in their riding – and in 3-way races, which candidate they wanted to choose. This approach is grounded in our belief in engaging supporters in strategic decisions, which is integral to Leadnow’s model. However, in some cases we failed to provide our community with adequate context and analysis to make an informed decision. Were we to do this again, in ridings like Vancouver Granville, Burnaby North–Seymour, and Esquimalt Saanich-Sooke, we would highlight the volatility and risks shown by the polling and even consider advising our community to not recommend a candidate, while maintaining their power as decision-makers.
UPDATE 13 December, 2015
After reading the Leadnow report I am again disappointed by the hypocrisy of this group. They do the full mea culpa on the Vancouver Granville campaign, the one where they recommended the pal of the Leadnow Executive Director over the candidate who became Minister of Justice in the Trudeau Cabinet.
In Vancouver-Granville, there was some speculation that we recommended the NDP candidate because of her previous working relationship with Leadnow’s Executive Director, Lyndsay Poaps. Lyndsay’s relationship with Mira Oreck did not impact the recommendation process or outcome in any way however we could have more proactively clarified that it would have no bearing on the decision.
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Leadnow+accused+bias+conflict+interest/11441670/story.html
But then they run out of apologies and go back to begging for donations. Leadnow claims its goal is to make itself obsolete. That’s standard Marxist rhetoric, but the hypocrisy lies in the use of a glossy, superficial report in an attempt to pave over holes in its credibility like the Burnaby-North Seymour debacle where Liberal Terry Beech had to fight the twin headwinds of a resurgent Conservative candidate and the perverse influence of this group’s NDP selection on his way to a 3000-vote plurality.
In the fundraising drive initiated by its election report, it seems as if Leadnow’s task has now become the tapping of the wallets of unsuspecting do-gooders across Canada.
Review-Mirror column on the morning after the election
October 20, 2015
On August 14 in a column in this newspaper I asked, “Would Canadians support a coalition between Tom Mulcair and Stephen Harper?”
“If it came to a hung Parliament, I would suggest that Thomas Mulcair would find more in common with Stephen Harper than either would find with Justin Trudeau. Trudeau seems unwilling to compromise his Federalist, pro-constitution, pro-charter of rights position. This may leave him in a strong position as leader of the opposition against the strange bedfellows across the aisle in the next parliament.
“But would 63% of Canadians still support a coalition if it involved Stephen Harper’s Conservatives?
“Perhaps more to the point at this juncture of the campaign: will Mulcair’s cooperation in Harper’s boycott of the national debates cause him trouble with his supporters?
“According to the August 14th Ekos poll, 81% of NDP supporters stand firmly in favour of more large-scale debates, televised nationally with all four national leaders in attendance.
“Thomas Mulcair may have to decide whether it’s better to forsake Stephen Harper and face Liz May, Justin Trudeau, and an empty chair in debate rather than to risk the loss of the university graduates, that critical 14% of his support which this spring parachuted in from the Trudeau camp during the height of the attack ad campaign. If he slips up, these activist voters can just as easily return to the Red Tent and carry election victory with them.”
No doubt the blame for the demise of the NDP dynasty in Quebec will go to the niqab controversy and the highly questionable practice of strategic voting, but I would suggest seeds of the Liberal romp across the ridings of Eastern Canada last night lay in the 25 million dollar program of attack ads against Justin Trudeau and in Tom Mulcair’s tacit support of Stephen Harper’s boycott of syndicated leaders’ debates.
When just before the election NDP candidate Andrew Thomson commented that the NDP could work with the Harper Conservatives to form a government, something clicked in the minds of millions of voters. This election was all about weeding Stephen Harper’s strain of divisive politics out of the Canadian garden, and the potential of a missed root cropping up and re-infesting our Canada was more than progressives could bear.
They came out to vote in droves. First Nations polling stations ran out of ballots. What we saw last night on CBC was the product of many, many individuals deciding that they wanted no more of Stephen Harper. Thomas Mulcair’s NDP was swept away in the rush.
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The real nail-biter for me on election night was the race in Burnaby North-Seymour, a suburb of Vancouver, where our son Charlie Croskery managed newcomer Terry Beech’s campaign. Strategic voting sites had unanimously favoured NDP candidate Carol Baird Ellan, a retired provincial court judge, claiming that Terry continued to poll in the mid-teens in a two-party race between Ellan and Conservative, Mike Little. Charlie told me last week that he had to decide whether to devote their advertising to correcting the misconception or competing with Mike Little.
Yesterday morning when I wished him well he responded that it all depended upon how good a job they could do in getting out the vote. By 1:30 a.m. my mental math had improved considerably as I watched the differential in the votes steadily grow as Terry’s lead increased from under a hundred to almost 2000, at which point Canada.com stepped in and declared Terry Beech the MP-designate for Burnaby North-Seymour. CBC followed shortly after.
I’ve no doubt Charlie, Roz, Ravi and Terry were door-knocking dynamos, but the Liberal wave floated a lot of boats in B.C. In politics you take your breaks where you can get them.
Congratulations, Terry Beech M.P., your courageous family and your dedicated crew.
Terry Beech MP for Burnaby North-Seymour
October 19, 2015
This summer my son Charlie Croskery quit his job in order to run his friend Terry’s federal election campaign. It seems to have turned out rather well. At this point Canada.com declared Terry Beech the winner. At last look he has opened up a 3000 vote lead over Carol Baird Ellan.
LIB: Terry Beech – elected
10,851
NDP:Carol Baird Ellan
8,626
CON:Mike Little
8,461
GRN:Lynne Quarmby
1,565
LTN:Chris Tylor
131
IND:Helen Hee Soon Chang
105
COM:Brent Jantzen
72
ML:Brian Sproule
27
If you haven’t seen this…
October 19, 2015
Hierarchies of worth
October 16, 2015
This Embassy Magazine article by immigration lawyer Maureen Silcoff offers an indictment of the Harper positions on Israel and Syrian refugees. Turns out lots of Jews don’t like Harper’s fear-and-division world view. For one thing she talks about Canadian synagogues signing up to sponsor Syrian refugee families. Jews know what it’s like to be refugees.
I’ve never read anything quite like Silcoff’s essay.
Embassy Magazine: historians on racism in Harper campaign
October 14, 2015
This fine article provides warnings in a historical context for the burst of racism we are seeing in this federal election campaign from the Conservative Party of Canada.
The final week of the campaign
October 13, 2015
8:30 a.m. October 13, 2015
The deadline for my newspaper column approaches. The empty page stares back at me. It’s not as though I have nothing to write: I have read and thought about little else but the election campaign for the last week.
But I’ve become utterly addicted to my morning hit of numbers. Nic Nanos posts overnight polls every morning at 6:00 a.m. EDT. All across Canada journalists and information junkies have adjusted their sleep to this new addiction. We have watched the Liberals slowly trend upwards as the NDP just as slowly moved down. One by one, it seems, the university-educated voters are flying back to the Liberal roost after a summer with the NDP.
This morning there were no Nanos Numbers, something about Thanksgiving Day.
Yikes! We need those numbers for our peace of mind. We’re watching for the Liberal lead over the Conservatives to exceed 8%. For some reason there’s a consensus that Trudeau needs that cushion in the polls to be safe from last-minute manipulations of the vote by Conservative mechanics.
In fact, there’s even an international surveillance team on site in Ottawa to guard against voting irregularities. Embassy magazine reports that Hannah Roberts, a Brit, heads the team mandated to pay particular attention to potential voting difficulties emerging from changes instituted by the Fair Elections Act. Students, aboriginals and the elderly are particularly at risk. Robocalls and financial irregularities also fall under their purview.
A B.C. story popped up this morning on National Newswatch identifying a series of irate voters who complained that they have either been dropped from the Elections Canada computer, or in one case, moved to Saskatchewan. Changes of polling station aren’t too bad in Eastern Ontario. I can stand driving to Delta instead of Portland. But some poor guy on an island off the B.C. coast has to travel a long distance to another island in order to vote, and he doesn’t own a boat.
Another issue emerged in Burnaby North-Seymour. My son’s candidate, Liberal Terry Beech, has finally emerged as the front runner by a couple of points over the Conservative candidate, but all of the strategic voting sites resolutely insist that the NDP candidate, now in third place and outside the margin of error, is their choice to defeat Harper. So where does Terry’s ad budget go in the final week, into fighting a misconception the strategic voting sites have failed to correct, or into competing with the Conservative challenger?
An issue which may strike closer to home has to do with the TPP and compensation for dairy farmers. We all watched Stephen Harper promise $4.3 billion to leave farmers whole. Today Elizabeth Thompson in iPolitics quotes a privy council source claiming that so far there has been no legislation passed to authorize any such payment. It sounded like a done deal on CBC when Harper said it, but apparently it isn’t.
So I return to the polls. Quebec graphs are quite soothing. They have smooth, sinuous curves, rather like a bedpost built by a skilled French-Canadian craftsman. By comparison the BC graphs look like a shattered window. I asked Dr. Roz, the family statistician. She responded that the sample size is considerably smaller in B.C. than in Quebec and Ontario. Another online commenter explained that pollsters have traditionally had trouble making sense of BC voting patterns.
Conservatives enjoy wheeling out their favourite John Diefenbaker comment about polls: “Dogs like them.” No doubt Stephen Harper echoes this sentiment at this point, but one wag on Twitter this morning pointed out that Harper’s quite happy to quote polls as long as they support his initiatives like Bill C-51, bombing Syria, and banning the niqab.
Meanwhile, the Blue Jays’ fortunes are no big deal: I’m on pins and needles until Wednesday at 6:00 a.m.
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Harry Leslie Smith vs Stephen Harper
October 12, 2015
I love the way Mr. Smith writes. See below.
Apple picking
October 11, 2015
The trees in the orchard did not bear last year. This year they more than made up for it with a bumper crop of large, largely unblemished fruit. Because for years my pruning practices had more to do with the safe passage of mowers beneath the trees than ease of harvest, most of the apples are too high to reach. Of course if there are friends to operate the tractor, or even do a portion of the picking, that’s not such a serious problem.
Once two dozen bushel baskets arrived from the supplier, we were able to get at the job.
Tasha Kheiriddin on the niqab controversy: important
October 9, 2015
Columnist Tasha Kheiriddin has offered a credible explanation for Stephen Harper’s resurrection of the niqab controversy in response to Rosie Barton’s question in the middle of an interview on the Trans Pacific Partnership. Kheiriddin insists it wasn’t a mistake. Harper clearly intended to revive the issue.
She refers to an incident in India on September 28th where a group of Hindus beat a Muslim farmer to death for eating beef, leading to protests and further deaths. The Hindu/Muslim flareup has reverberated throughout the worldwide Hindu community.
Harper’s micro-analysis has evidently identified a substantial population of Hindus in tightly-contested ridings in the Toronto area.
According to this logic, the anti-Muslim rhetoric is for them.
Kheiriddin’s unique view of this is certainly worth a read.
the Walnut Diary 