Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- Frances Russell makes the case for mandatory voting as an antidote to vote suppression:

At first glance, entrenched opposition to mandatory voting in all the English-speaking democracies - Australia excepted - is puzzling. Given all the obligations of citizenship in a democracy -- paying taxes, serving on juries, licencing vehicles and businesses, paying to educate the next generation of citizens -it seems odd to oppose obligatory participation in the most important "have-to-do" of all: electing those who run our municipal, provincial and national governments. Mandatory voting -- all citizens of voting age required to cast ballots enforced by a small fine -- creates a better-informed electorate and produces a more truly representative democracy, in sharp contrast to the first-past-the-post system in vogue mainly in the Anglo-Saxon world.

Mandatory voting would also render useless the widespread use of voter suppression tactics that apparently tried to pollute and skew the outcome of Canada's 2011 federal election; tactics like robocalls sending people to distant and wrong polling stations and telling lies about "high voter turnout." According to court documents filed in mid-August 2012 by the Commissioner of Elections Canada, these suppression tactics may have occurred in as many as 247 of Canada's 308 ridings and were recorded in all ten provinces and at least one territory.

- NDP MP Andrew Cash points out the need for public policy which recognizes and improves the conditions of workers facing precarious employment. But of course, the Cons are responding by ramming through one set of attacks on workers, and plotting out plenty more to come.

- Bruce Cheadle writes about the Cons' latest moves to shut down debate on controversial legislation. And Martin Regg Cohn notes that Ontario's Libs share the Harper Cons' preference for a culture of unaccountability - which became glaringly obvious as they deleted the documentation behind their gas plant cancellations in the belief it would prevent anybody from questioning the action.

- Finally, Chantal Hebert minimizes the long-term effect of Clusterduff. But at the very least, the aroma of scandal emanating from the Senate figures to affect the next campaign one way or another: either Senators will once again hit the campaign trail and remind voters of the scandal, or the Cons (and Libs) will be forced to make do without the artificial advantage of publicly-funded Senate spokesflacks. And Keith Beardsley for one sees the Cons as being significantly weakened by public confirmation that they don't believe they have to follow any rules.

Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- The Star recognizes the danger facing anybody who tries to convince a Con MP to listen to constituents' concerns - as the Cons don't care enough to respond to specific appeals, but will be happy to use whatever information they can gather for future marketing purposes.

- Meanwhile, Don Lenihan suggests we should be more concerned with properly regulating location-based data generally than the comparatively small amount of personal information collected by political parties. But I'm not sure how he draws a distinction between location information and other personal information - and if anything, the argument to regulate political parties' use of data looks even stronger to me if there's a real possibility that location-based data might allow them to anticipate or determine where any voter is at any given time.

- The Harper Cons may have decided to axe the National Council on Welfare. But thanks to Sixth Estate, the Council's work won't be similarly disappeared.

- Finally, Joan Bryden reports on the current state of statements by members in the House of Commons. But I'm particularly skeptical of the proposed reform by one former Harper staffer:

Beardsley said the Speaker should formulate strict, new guidelines for members' statements or "do away with them altogether."

Of course, that wouldn't stop the Cons from being as abusive as they like during ongoing debates in Parliament. But it would severely restrict the range of subjects discussed, as statements by members and question period are effectively the only two times when MPs can choose their topic rather than being bound by a schedule that's mostly imposed by the Cons.

Which means that Beardsley's proposal really looks to be just one more attempt to declare that the Cons' abuses should limit other parties' MPs in making use of a valuable tool to raise topics of interest which don't figure in the Harper agenda.

Juxtaposition

Matt Bai:

The problem here doesn’t lie with the activists..., ordinary citizens who are doing what citizens are supposed to do — engaging in a conversation about the direction of the country. Rather, the problem would seem to rest with the political leaders who pander to the margins of the margins, employing whatever words seem likely to win them contributions or TV time, with little regard for the consequences.

Keith Beardsley:

(R)emoving the taxpayer funding will force them to streamline their operations, improve their fundraising mechanism and pay attention to issues that matter both to Canadians and their membership. To ignore that reality would mean that your fundraising would be unsuccessful and you would have to cut back your operations. You would get a pretty quick wake-up call to refocus on what mattered...