How election fraud looks in the 21st century

When I was very young, allowed to stay up at my grandfather’s campaign headquarters because it was election night, the most astonishing sight was two grizzled old loggers swaggering in some time after polls closed.

They would brag to everyone’s nervous amusement about how many times they had voted that day. With British Columbia’s archaic voter’s list, if you followed the obits, you had a list of the safely dead. These old gents went from one riding to another on Vancouver Island casting phoney ballots.

But despite these antics, along with great volumes of election day rye, and $5 payoffs for every extra vote cast, Canadian democracy survived. The 21st century challenge to our democracy is more existential.

For a few thousand dollars, you can buy thousands of fake identities, generate digital ads targeted, at the riding poll level, at angry gun owners. Pay for the ads offshore undetectably, and have scurrilous smears swamp an opponent with no fear of detection. That’s a little more frightening than ballot box stuffing in days of old.

This may already have happened in two provincial elections in Canada, but the nightmare is we have no way to know. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that the next government of Canada could be chosen by Russian bots and trolls, or any other combination of nations or interest groups determined to shift Canadian policy in their favour. This is not acceptable.

The federal government’s new legislation addresses some of these issues, and they have been forced to toughen it somewhat, but it is far from adequate. Social media firms should be required to maintain a public archive of all sales to anyone promoting or opposing a party, candidate or policy issue. TV, radio and newspapers have been so required to do for decades. They should display the real purchaser of the ad, having ascertained who the ultimate paymaster is. If they can’t they may not take their money.

Ads should not be permitted to disappear on viewing, as many are today. A publicly accessible website with every message should be freely available in real-time. Their servers hold the information, they have no reason not to make it available.

If they knowingly distribute material that is libelous or is a potential breach of our hate literature laws, or was paid for by a foreign actor, then, like every other publisher or broadcaster, they will be jointly liable with the author of such drivel. The penalties should be robust.

Political parties need to play a more responsible role, too. They should jointly pledge to insist on rules such as these before they spend a dollar on any footdragging social media vendor.

To those who fear “unilateral disarmament” in the face of one opponent or another refusing to comply, or claiming to and then cheating, they should contemplate this: Such a foolish political player would be attacked mercilessly on all sides instantly.

Their opponents would be entirely reasonable in asking, “What foreign money are you hiding? What messages are you secretly spreading that you are ashamed to admit?”

It would be as deadly as the GOP having been provably accused, during, not after the 2016 campaign for having accepted Russian money and favour.

The underpinning of any democracy is the faith and conviction of its citizens that no one can cheat their way to power.

Destroying this trust after just one campaign where these dangerous games are shown to have influenced the outcome, would shake that faith for years, and impugn politics and politicians of every party.

It would undermine the pillar of trust that is all that keeps any democracy from collapse.