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Comment by steven2012 | Hacker News Reader

steven2012

If I understand it correctly, Canada had 3 elections in the span of 5 years, and Harper was elected as the prime minster 3 times in a row. To be more precise, the Conservatives had 2 minority governments and 1 majority government, with Harper being the leader of the Conservatives.

Sorry, but just like the Bush era, by voting someone in again and again, and knowing his agenda, it basically legitimizes anything he does. I think Canadians already knew who he was and his behavior, and to imagine him getting voted in 3 times in a row, well, this isn't on Harper, it's on the Canadians for voting him in.

It's a real shame though that Harper is such a tyrant that he would allow this destruction of historical data. That's not someone I would want as my leader, and I hope in the next election his party gets voted out. But for that to happen there has to be a better alternative, and apparently so far there hasn't been one.

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It's not quite that simple, though. The Harper government has cheated in most of those elections - they were caught in 2006 in the In and Out scandal, but it carried no punishment and so nobody cared. They are also recently (2011) accused of using robocalls targeted at (elderly/non-conservative) voters, posing as Elections Canada, and telling voters to go to the incorrect polling station. This definitely happened, and a few Conservatives are implicated, but to what extent it affected the elections and to what high level of power the order came from is being investigated still (by those appointed to Elections Canada by Stephen Harper).

Canada may have elected the Conservatives - or we may have never voted them in to power at all. It's tough to tell because they cheat in every election.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_and_Out_scandal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_...

It does appear the Canadian conservatives have been learning from their brethren to the south: Karl Rove started the worst of such election abuses in the primaries against McCain in 2000.

My theory is it's the Baby Boomers nearing or now in retirement who are concerned about crime, pension, maybe even concerned about immigrants and oddly immigrants tend to be more conservative.

I also think it's deceptive that they call themselves the Conservative party I bet older people may think they are the Progressive Conservatives but they are not it's two radically different political parties with similar names. I consider the current Conservative (Party of Canada) to be nothing more than the Reform Party reborn, for those who don't know Reform was like Canada's Tea Party.

The last election was supposed to change it all it seemed like everyone wasn't going to vote Conservative and there was even a massive push to get young people to vote which seemed to be working. Then the bottom fell out and the Conservatives were not just voted back in but a majority! I say it's the Boomers.

> To be more precise, the Conservatives had 2 minority governments and 1 majority government ...

And all it took was some country-wide election fraud[1].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Canadian_federal_election_...

all it took was some country-wide election fraud

That's a bit of a stretch. A federal court found that electoral fraud had taken place in 6 out of 308 ridings, and did not affect the outcome of the election in any of those ridings. Meanwhile 12 ridings would have needed to change hands to change the outcome of the election.

If I cheat at a couple of questions in an exam; but I would have had the exam anyway with the others, do I get punished or is it fine ?

If I match-fix a game in a sport championship but I would have won the whole thing anyway because I beat the next opponents, do I get punished or is it fine ?

When a group of politicians ask to be in control of a country and to be trusted with all of its power and responsibilities, and they have proven to be lying and cheating to those they represent, is it ok because the end result wasn't affected ?

I realize the analogies there are not all that good, but honestly whether or not it did have an impact doesn't matter, the fact is that it did happen.

I'm not saying that the people responsible shouldn't be punished (if we ever figure out who was behind it...), just that it's inaccurate to claim that the fraud was responsible for the Conservatives getting elected. The Conservatives won those elections because Canadian voters collectively decided that the Conservatives should win.

The article mentions reports of misleading calls in 247 ridings. Anyway, parties receive public funding based on the number of votes they receive, so any amount of election fraud is essentially stealing funding from another party.

> Anyway, parties receive public funding based on the number of votes they receive

This is false. The Conservatives put a stop to the per-party funding based on votes a long time ago.

> , so any amount of election fraud is essentially stealing funding from another party.

...but this was true when the elections happened. That's extra evil, I hadn't thought of it that way.

Apparently, it's gradually being reduced until next year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_political_financing_in_...

If I understand correctly, they have a system where the one getting the biggest amount of vote wins, even if it's not even half of the total, and the other side was cut between two parties (+ the historic quebec party), and the conservatives won with a quarter of the votes. And even if you could force these other parties to merge in order to oppose a single force, you end up in the usual "bi-party" situation which is still bad.

Without changing the whole thing, I don't understand why a system like this doesn't use a two turn election, unless one gets 50% of votes +1 in the first turn, a second turn happens when you can only vote for the two who had the more votes in the first turn. Conservatives would have never won in that situation, and that shows a huge problem in the system as-is. To take a poor analogy it asks people what is there choice between 3 shades of blue, or bright red. Most people agree on blue, but they differ on which exact shade of it, and red end up being chosen. If you had given the choice between blue and red, blue would have won absolutely because people who votes blue 1 were still very much in favor of blue 2 or blue 3 if the alternative was red.

Anyway, good luck to my friends in Canada

Not really.

What counts is how many MPs you get voted in, including the leader who's going to become the PM (see footnote). Let's say there's 100 counties, then you need to win 51 to have a majority government and you can basically pass any law because MPs tend to follow party lines. A minority government is when you get less than 51 MPs, in which case you always have to ally yourself with another party if you want to pass a law, or just form a coalition.

Note: If the leading party's leader isn't voted in, he can swap with another MP. It almost happened in Québec with Jean Charest.

As a Canadian voter over the last 5 years this fact is really frustrating.

Everyone knows he sucks; Other parties get a lot of hype, and the future seems bright.

But when the results come in, Conservatives always win.

I just don't get it man.

You don't get it?

Split vote on the center/left (liberal, ndp, green), and liberal leaders who lack intellect or charisma or both.

Exactly... where ~40% of the pop vote leads to a majority government & incontestable omnibus bills.

by voting someone in again and again, and knowing his agenda, it basically legitimizes anything he does.

No, it doesn't. In all 3 of those elections more than 60% of the voters voted against Harper; he only won because there is only one right-wing party but 4 major left-wing parties.

Plurality voting is a sham.

Citizens ought to critically examine and assess the policies and practices of their government on an ongoing basis. To simply through up one's hands and say "there was an election, basically anything they do is legitimate" would be be slavish, immoral and absurd.

Of course one would hope and expect that a government would govern in alignment with it's agenda. It's hard to imagine that the core of the agenda was "badly manage a digitization process to destroy priceless knowledge while not really saving any money"

Presumably many of the people who voted for Harper will want the incompetent underling responsible dealt with, if for no other reason than to prevent the management of their actual agenda from coming into disrepute.

Something to keep in mind is that Canada doesn't have a two party system. In the election that the conservatives gained a Majority, they only got ~40% of the vote. The majority of voters voted for 'not the Conservatives', but often split the vote.

Can the other parties who had the majority split between them form a coalition?

Coalition governments are possible in Canada, and have occurred before. In the case of the last election, the votes were split such that the Conservatives won a majority of seats.

It seems though that it only may be possible at election time. A few years prior to the election in which the Conservatives gained a minority, the Liberals and the NDP attempted to form a coalition government and the Governor General (The queen's representative in Canada) ended up proroguing parliament on Stephen Harper's behest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prorogation_in_Canada#History

Let's not forget that Canada is a large country, with an unevenly distributed population, and no party really serves the entire country well. I don't think it's just a matter of no other suitable candidate being available.

Yeah, we,say the same thing about Obama here in the US.

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