The buzz in Canadian media in recent weeks has been China’s interference in Canada’s electoral system.
For this former political junkie, the details of how the elections were interfered with are kind of sketchy. Maybe more information will come out later.
It seems the Conservative Party has been on the losing end of the Chinese interference. They claim the Liberals are benefiting, so that is why the Liberals are doing nothing about it.
My understanding is that the people managing Canadian elections seldom overturn the first public result of any election because of any irregularities. Rather they address the irregularities in a quiet way for the next election. I would say that the Liberals were aware of the problem and have instructed Elections Canada to find solutions, which could include new election laws that could quickly pass through Parliament. Nonetheless, the Conservatives are making political hay to make it seem the Liberals are incompetent or corrupt.
Regardless of where this issue ends, damage has been done. A recent poll said 15% of Canadians believe the election was stolen from Conservatives because of Chinese interference. How much of this thinking is of a partisan nature and how much is of a true belief of successful interference is uncertain. But with 15% claiming a steal, we could agree that China has been somewhat successful in undermining the trust of Canadian elections.
The Math behind Canada’s Electoral System
The Canadian Parliament elects 338 members from 338 constituencies across the country. Each constituency has about 110,000 people.
When the Election Writ is dropped (which means Parliament is dissolved and the politicians go into formal campaign mode for the next six to 12 weeks), about half of those constituencies are already decided. There is nothing that can be done at the campaign level to change those outcomes.
The other half can be swung. If one party has a better national campaign, that party will win more of the close races. If, in a close race at the local level, a party has a likeable candidate and a better ground team to get out the vote, that party is more likely to win that local constituency. So let’s just say good campaigning works in these swing constituencies. And this should be considered normal politics.
Foreign interference can also help, but its effects are limited. Sorry, most Canadians are not that gullible to be affected by a little extra bad press, extra lawn signs, and insidious social media commentary. Most Canadian base their voting decisions on tradition voting practices, the past performance of the parties/politicians, and/or the current campaign messages coming from the mouths of the real live politicians. At best, foreign interference might be able to swing 500 votes in a constituency election. But anymore than 500 is overstating the power of the interference.
I briefly inspected the 2021 election results, I found four constituencies where the vote separation was less than 500 votes. Today’s Canadian Parliament would not be significantly changed if these four seats had gone to their second place.
I know this math won’t satisfy the 15% who are using the interference to claim the election was stolen from the Conservatives. People don’t like mixing math and politics, especially math that goes against their opinion.
More Meddling for Meddlers
We could argue that the Chinese intervention has both succeeded and failed. On one hand, I kind of doubt China got pro-China politicians elected to Parliament. On the other hand, China got enough Canadians to seemingly believe that it could elect pro-China politicians to Parliament, which then leads to the logic that democratic elections are pointless, which then leads to the logic that Canada might as well be an oligarchy. It seems we Canadians might be on a path of How Democracies Die.
But there is so much more that foreign actors and other nefarious can do to debase democracy. They could go after the internal elections in the political parties!
At this point, I should give a caveat emptor warning. It has been 31 years since I’ve been in party politics. Maybe things have changed, but I doubt it. So do check things out before taking on my recommendations.
While Elections Canada runs a pretty good ship in keeping track of voters and their ballots, the internal party elections are amateurish in comparison. So here are two loopholes to exploit:
Donate funds to aspiring candidates for the internal party election, where there’s almost no financing rules. Whatever rules are there are hard to investigate and enforce. Find the best bozo wanting the job and send some money his/her way. Get the bozo to hire a professional campaign manager, not a volunteer. Or maybe you could hire the manager for the bozo, leaving no paper trail. If the bozo wins the internal election, then that person could ride on the party flying carpet in the general election. The more bozos in Parliament, the sillier Parliament looks. How is that for destabilizing democracy?
Invent party members who really don’t exist. Find some valid addresses, put a fake name to the address. Sell them a party membership. The parties do very little confirming whether the new members are actually living in those addresses. If the internal election uses a face-to-face meeting room to cast a paper ballot, hire some clowns from wherever, give them their party membership card, and they can vote. Fifty clowns can often swing the result to the bozo in these elections. And the parties are going more toward e-voting, so it will be even easier for the clowns to masquerade as party members.
Canada has 10 provinces, each complete with its competing political parties. You can play the same game in all provincial elections by interfering with internal party elections. And then there are municipal elections! Just imagine if all Canadian politicians could be branded with Chinese, American, Saudi, mega-corporate, or organized criminal influence, what would be the legitimacy of any elected Canadian politician?
If this ruse is discovered, that will contribute to the destabilizing of Canadian democracy. The meddler still wins!
Just imagine if Canadian politicians spending most of their day accusing each other of undue influence instead of solving real problems.
I kind of doubt meddlers to Canadian elections are reading this lowly writer’s articles. Besides I think they have already figured out how to upset the internal party elections. They just need to get more serious.
Or maybe, the parties have more protocols in place today. But I still hear a few too many stories of shenanigans of internal elections in the Canadian media. But you can investigate for yourself.
As an example, read to “Aftermath” of this Wikipedia link for this Canadian internal party election in 2021.
Methinks internal party elections at the federal and provincial levels can be gamed for the benefit of nefarious forces. Bozos can be sent to capital cities; politicians can be assumed to be illegitimately elected; the party internal functioning is tampered by meddlers looking for favors. So democracy is discredited, even if the general election is well run. It’s so much easier to interfere in the party elections than then general election.
And a meddler can “invest” in more than one party at the same time!
Solving the Meddling Problem
If Canadians don’t like this destabilization, then I have a solution. Canadians can change their electoral system from the Westminster model to Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG).
The base unit of the TDG is a neighborhood of about 200 residents. The neighbors will elect one of their own to serve in TDG governance.
Each neighborhood will have a few neighbors who are reasonably well known and respected. These neighbors would get most of the votes; one of them will move into governance to represent the neighborhood; that person would be from among the best neighbors for the job.
The electoral units are too small and too many for political parties to work their machine and attain any partisan victory. Even if it could, it would be hard to keep that politician under party control.
Similarly, nefarious forces would not be able to affect the results of any TDG election. Imagine a competent neighbor agreeing to be a stooge for a meddler? The annual election will find another representative. And such a stooge is unlikely to rise higher in the TDG. Or imagine a neighbor known to be a bozo to his neighbors and getting meddler money for his local campaign. Would the neighbors still vote for this bozo?
Gaming the American System
I hate to say it, but the electoral systems for the USA are more promising ground for meddlers than Canada.
“Why,” you ask?
Because there is more math for the meddlers. Many more American electoral districts are close to a 50/50 split between the two parties. A meddler need only shift the voting intention of a percent point or two to change the outcome. Here is one story of a clever meddler in 2016:
We could argue that because it seems these Facebook ads were supposedly paid for by real live Americans or real live American corporations, this ad campaign was really not meddling. But a foreign meddler can use a similar technique. Somehow foreign meddling of voters’ minds is wrong and domestic meddling is not.
Concerned Americans want to fix this mess by passing a whole bunch of new laws. Even if meddlers are caught red-handed breaking these new laws, they still win with destabilizing democracy.
And when meddlers have proven to affect the results, would it not make sense for both political parties to court the money and services of the meddlers?
Americans need to build a new democracy. . . . Like, really need to. . . . . Really, really need to.
Just for my American readers, here is a link on how to build this new democracy.
Everything is in your hands to stop meddling of democratic elections.
Really . . . in your hands!
Published on Medium 2023
So Politically Paralyzed We Are
