Those who follow politics in our small town often see analogies from the larger world. Often what works in “big box politics” filters down to local level as it is tried here too. This example was recently forwarded to me. I must point out that it is publicly available information.

attached is an appeal to Information and Privacy Commission concerning whether the town did due diligence fulfilling an FOI (Freedom of Information request) made by a hitherto anonymous person.
The identity of the group who made the FOI request isn’t hard to guess nor is it difficult to guess their motive too. The Information and Privacy Commission found that the claim was without merit and that the town had done a good response to the FOI. I note there is another huge legal bill created by the town misfits.

The interesting part is that an FOI is confidential, but in appealing to the Information and Privacy Commission, it became public. The problem with trying to plant landmines is that you aren’t supposed to see them digging the hole.

Let me paraphrase the FOI:
it digs into the last election. Asks for all emails, letters and faxes from voters referring to the election. Wants a list of all scrutineers, the names of everyone who voted by telephone, the IP addresses of all those who voted online and how many votes they cast.
They also requested a list of all the companies and people that were involved in the election data including the companies that made the software.
 
A considerable list, some of it obviously confidential. Much of the information almost certainly not held by the town. Nonetheless town staff fulfilled what they could. This clearly wasn’t enough for the people requesting the information so they tried to imply that the town was deliberately hiding information.

As you can see, they weren’t.

 My interest lies in the request itself.
it can only have two purposes:
1. Creating doubt that the last election was honest and above board, in some way hacked or the results doctored. Therefore the last council who were soundly kicked to the kerb should have stayed in.
and/or
2. A foundation to undermine the next election results so when certain candidates show poorly they can put it down to fraud. Somehow dead people and fake voters changed the results.
Sound familiar?
this is the basis of the “Big Lie” that is currently tearing American democracy; the one where the election was stolen and Brian Smith…erm, Trump will return to the Whitehouse.

Whether you support this council or hate it, the one thing that holds our system together is the belief that it is fair and just. That the winner is the one who got the most votes and the loser lost fairly. We are seeing what happens when this trust erodes watching the turmoil of American politics.

There are people in Wasaga who see this doubt and mistrust as a lever to get what they want. They are willing to drip poison into our democracy hoping to blame it on the current council and their supporters by implying that they stole or hacked the result. They don’t even need proof. The last three years of throwing shit on the wall has proved that. They just need to sew the bitter seeds of doubt.

In the very real even that their candidates miss the mark in the next election they can simply stand up and say “told you so, the system is rigged”, that its impossible that they could have lost.

Just Like Trump.

To do something like this, to deliberately wreck trust in the system in order to win no matter what the cost to our community. That takes a huge ego.


here is the link to the IPC appeal:
https://decisions.ipc.on.ca/ipc-cipvp/orders/en/item/499224/index.do?q=mo-4061