Decline Your Vote Elect Some Cons!

                                                                Post updated below

The option to formally Decline Your Vote in the Ontario provincial election tomorrow has been getting  some  press, with the OttawaCitizen even giving detailed instructions on how to do it. 

It's a brilliant strategy when you think about it - getting people in a province with under 50% voter turnout in the last provincial election to think they will be making a difference this time by refusing to vote.  Activism! Stand up for your right not to vote!
And who benefits from lower voter turnout when the contest is between the Harper/Hudak/Ford TeaCon Trifecta entry vs the other guys that progressives are generally pissed at and feeling "none of the above" about?

The man behind the Decline Your Vote campaign is former Campaign Research employee Paul Synnott. 
Quick refresher on Campaign Research from principal Kouvalis :



Synnott left Campaign Research in April 2010 to launch his own company, Polisource, from May 2010 to Dec. 2011, and rolled out his first Decline Your Vote campaign in Sept 2011:

"Polisource.ca is a New Media Solutions company focusing on conservative Canadian Politics at the Municipal, Provincial and Federal levels.

Political campaigns in Canada are subject to strict spending limits. Polisource.ca will help you deliver your message through the Internet utilizing the latest tools in a efficient, cost-effective manner."

Getting people to suppress their own votes would definitely qualify as cost-effective.

And despite his particular dislike of Hudakery, Synnott's conservative creds are not in doubt. He has worked on conservative election campaigns in Ontario and here's his upload of Kory Teneycke's Oily the Splot attack ad attacking Dion's carbon tax back in 2008.

But here's something I don't get.
From Synnott's Decline Your Vote website :

Join us in spreading the word about the option of "Declining Your Vote"  [Us?]

We are looking for individuals in all ridings to spread the word locally. There will be simple flyers you can download and distribute in your neighbourhood or across your city or town. We will have lawn signs available to print as well as a utility to make phone calls to educate people.

Social media will be a large part of our initiative, so if you can help us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram - sign up below!
The following ridings are our "Top 10" to target : [Wed night update : additional riding info in red and orange was added by me and is not in original Decline post]                                                    

Brant                                       LIB        by 1106 votes
Etobicoke Centre                  LIB        by 7960 votes
Kitchener-Waterloo               NDP     by 3748 votes
London-West                         NDP     by 3278 votes
Mississauga-Erindale           LIB        by 4258 votes
Oakridges-Markham             LIB        by 4928 votes
Ottawa South                          LIB        by 1279 votes
St. Catherines                        LIB        by 1705 votes
Windsor-West                        LIB        by 3583 votes
Thunder Bay-Atikokan           LIB        by  438 votes 

Why them? I don't know enough about local Ontario politics to know why those "Top 10" ridings in particular were chosen to elect Conservatives merit your considered and principled lack of voting. Perhaps someone out there in Ontarioland could fill me in on that.

h/t Reddit via Stephen Lautens
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Wed night Update : An answer as to why those particular ridings were targeted was provided by Brian Busby and Beijing York in comments. Seems they're currently held by Lib or NDP candidates in the 2011 provincial election and 2013 by-elections, while 8 out of 10 of those ridings voted Con federally.  
I've now added this info to Paul Synnott's original Decline Your Vote list above, as per Elections Ontario. 
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Thurs am update : More dumbass media promotion of Decline :
Windsor Star : Decline your vote ?
NaPo : Ontario Election 2014: How to vote for 'none of the above'
and a good one from Alheli Picazo : 'Decline your vote' makes no difference - with Brian Busby and Synnott in comments!
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Manning conference : Big Brother's big data

The Cons opposed collecting data for the long gun registry and the Canada long form census as "too intrusive" - and also muzzled Canadian federal scientists to keep any of their data from leaking out - but on Saturday they eagerly attended a conference to hear 'big data' proponents discuss how to collect more data about you in order to win elections.

Canada ‘light years’ behind U.S. on data mining in election campaigns, time to catch up, say experts 

Innovations in big data have started a “revolution” in the way political parties target voters and win election campaigns ...

 “There is a revolution in the way campaigns are not only run, but won,” said Mike Martens, director of the Manning Centre’s School of Practical Politics, at the Manning Centre Conference March 9 in Ottawa, at a session called, “The Cutting Edge in Practical Politics, The Data Revolution.” 

At the conference, Washington Slate columnist Sasha Issenberg explained in the years since the 2000 election in the United States, detailed voter registration information has been combined with information on individual customers from corporations to produce a detailed portrait of voters, how much they earn, their ethnicity, political affiliations, age, gender, annual income, and more.

It’s “a breakthrough,” said Mr. Issenberg, who wrote The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.

Tom Flanagan, "the godfather of CIMS" the Cons' voter database, told the G&M last year that purchased consumer data on spending habits was not added to CIMS while he was with the party.
But last year I posted a 2008 vid of CBC's Keith Boag getting a walk-through of CIMS by a Con staffer, augmented by commentary from Garth Turner and Michael Geist. Google took it down sometime this year so you can't watch it now and all that remains is a quote beneath it left by an outraged commenter :

"All of them have access to the list of voters provided by Elections Canada - from there they are free to buy data commercially."
What!

But there's this :
Can Press, October 18, 2007 : Tory database draws ire of privacy experts

The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says former Tory MP Garth Turner. Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics -- but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area. 

Both the federal Liberals and the NDP have separate databases for constituency work and voter tracking. Data does not migrate between the two. But the Conservatives use a single clearing house for all data collection, storage, data mining, mailing lists, voter tracking and any other partisan use such information may serve.

A single clearing house for all data. 
And now a further blurred line between "the Party" and the government, courtesy of Michael Sona last week :

Really? Government staffers in the public service working on the Hill "were encouraged" to add info about Canadians to a partisan Con Party election campaign database? Government subsidizing a political party?

I guess that's why they call it "the Harper government".

Update : Kai Nagata covered the Manning Conference for The Tyee. Here he catches Blogging Tory founder Stephen Taylor, who now holds Harper's old job as head of the National Citizens Coalition, bragging on the 'big data' panel about the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau's use of public funds for micro-targeting voters in 2008 :

"We sent out, I think, probably a hundred million pieces of mail. Paid for by the taxpayer, I should say. They were each barcoded, and they were each very issue-specific. Most people would sort of ignore it or say 'this is garbage.' But the few people who would actually send it back and say 'Hell yeah, that's what I'm all about' -- you would be able to put them in a database." 

Taylor's group, the NCC, gathers and cross-references sets of data to build pictures of voter types and figure out how to speak to them. 

"We found that CBC privatization petition signers are most likely Molson Canadian drinkers, they watch Dexter on television, they enjoy Sun News Network, they vote Conservative, they're from Toronto, and they donate to World Vision." Those discoveries help shape the messaging. 

A voter who proves unusually engaged on an issue can often be recruited as a volunteer. That's where Mike Martens comes in. Formerly the regional organizer for the federal Conservative Party in B.C., he now runs the School of Practical Politics at the Manning Centre. From now until the next election, Martens will be training thousands of volunteers online and at the school's new campus in Calgary.

From the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau to CIMS to your ear - your tax dollars hard at work re-electing the Harper government.


Best irony overload at the conference came from Tony Clement, MNC big data panelist and President of the Treasury Board of the most secretive government in Canadian history :

“I happen to think of data as Canada’s 21st century resource. … When all the information is supplied to the citizenry, why does government have to make the decision?"

And speaking of Tom Flanagan ... You know all those writers' and academics' editorials coming to Flanagan's defence over his child pornography remarks :

Jonathan Kay : The mobbing of Tom Flanagan is unwarranted and cruel 
Barry Cooper : Some academics are coming to the defence 
Rainer Knopff : U of C owes Tom Flanagan an apology 
William Watson : Tom Flanagan, meet George Orwell
Conrad Black : Turning public discourse into a never-ending shriek of ‘unclean!’
Jonathan Kay again : Tom Flanagan’s media critics leave their spines at the door

They all write for the Manning Centre's C2C Journal,  financed by Gwyn Morgan, his spouse Patricia Trottier, and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy 

Photo of Knopff at MNC 2013 sporting Flanagan button : David Climenhaga, Alberta Diary

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Yo! Opposition parties! This is what an election issue looks like

Globe and Mail online poll G8/G20 May 29, 2010

Security for the billion-dollar boondoggle is being managed by ex-CSIS director Ward Elcock, who also just spent another billion on Vancouver Olympics security.

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Asked why the London G20 expenses clocked in at $30-million last year by comparison, Elcock answered, "Bookkeeping."

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I wonder if we could possibly get some of that.

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