No. 14September 3, 2021
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Violations of Right to an Informed Vote
Self-Serving Use of Polling and “Voting Tools”
The Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada (MLPC) has received several questions and complaints from readers about how polling is used to disinform the polity, violate the right to an informed vote and manipulate election results. Polling is used to spread rumours and disinformation and then ask people questions about themselves. Poll results are proven inaccurate time and again. Why are they given such prominence during elections? Who pays for polls? Who makes decisions as to when they are released during elections?
People are bombarded with mass media saturation coverage of the so-called leaders. People calling themselves political analysts put their spin and counterspin on every election-related event. People hear an endless litany of campaign promises along with the results of constant polling. All of it deprives the people of their democratic right to think, discuss the concrete conditions of their lives and the performance of governments in office. They are deprived of the means to decide on the direction of the economic and political affairs of the country.
It is a very conscious self-serving attempt to convey that the issues have already been decided in backrooms by the “professional” politicians and “expert” advisors contracted by self-serving narrow private interests. The people’s ability to think and organize in their own interests, based on their direct experience in their daily lives, is of no value to these forces.
This is why the working people’s voice is silenced, why agendas and alternatives proposed by them are cast aside and even declared illegitimate. The aim of this anti-democratic electoral campaigning in which polling and “voting tools” play an integral part is to dampen the enthusiasm of those who are striving to work out their own views, policies, and agenda in order to decide on who should carry the banner of the people into the Parliament.
The only aim of what are called democratic elections in Canada is to get people to “pick a side” to determine, once again, which cartel party will form the next government to champion the narrow private interests which have integrated Canada into the U.S. war economy and war machine.
In this regard, the methods used by the polling companies and what are called “voting tools” are designed to disinform the polity. The disinformation is so that people never discuss their concerns, speak in their own name or advocate for their claims on society, discuss them, and organize their peers at work or in their communities to work out positions which favour them to provide these problems with solutions.
The MLPC calls on you to work out your own stands, based on your own experience and the conclusions you draw from it. Far from authorizing others over whom you exercise no control to speak in your name, discuss amongst your peers, draw warranted conclusions and speak in your own name!
Online “Voting Tool” Sponsored by the CBC
One of the on-line “voting tools” that claims to help electors figure out how to cast their ballot is called Vote Compass. It is hosted on CBC’s website, with the national broadcaster having commissioned Vox Pop Labs to use it.
CBC is in thick with polling companies and so-called opinion pollsters and with the cartel party system of government and the cartel parties themselves.
Vox Pop Labs is a polling company that operates in several countries, including the U.S., New Zealand, and Australia. It claims the tools help people figure out how to vote by directing them to the party they are “most aligned with.” If you use the tool for your riding, no matter how you answer the questions you are asked, only the candidates of the so-called major parties will come up as the party your thinking is most aligned with. This year, there are twenty-two political parties participating and independents running in many ridings but the only parties listed by Vote Compass are the Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, NDP and Peoples’ Party. There is also a generic “independent” as though all independents are the same. Parties such as the Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada are called fringe and not worthy of consideration. Besides this, the entire process is bogus from A to Z.
For instance, the set-up on Vote Compass is to present you with a whole bunch of statements and your role is to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10, from “strongly disagree” through to “strongly agree.” Questions are also posed with answers limited to another sliding scale from “much more” through to “much less.” They are stereotypical statements and questions designed to put you on either the so-called right or the so-called left, or in the “centre.”
An example of a question is “How much tax should large corporations pay?” Another is “The government should give priority to visible minorities when hiring.” On this basis, unwarranted conclusions are drawn which ascribe this or that opinion to Canadians based on their gender, beliefs, preferences and origin. At no time can the polity unite to deal with the problems people hold in common.
On top of this it asks all sorts of questions about your national origin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, income bracket and the like. On the basis of your answers, it will declare that people of x national origin or women or people in x income bracket or with x sexual orientation think in this or that way. It is unadulterated hogwash.
After completing the quiz by CBC’s Vote Compass to determine which cartel party best represents where you stand, Vote Compass goes on to ask for all sorts of information which it turns over to the cartel parties.
These are questions such as: Which of the six parties you would vote for today? Which leader do you have the most confidence in? Who are your neighbours most likely to vote for? Who did you vote for in the last election?
In other words, User Beware! The Vox Pop Lab/CBC Vote Compass tool and others like it are clearly part of the data collection used by the cartel parties to work out their manipulative strategies for securing votes. It is not a surprise to read — written in a manner designed not to draw attention — that all the information gathered will be “shared with political parties.”
For Your Information
Remember This? Role of Polling in Alberta’s 2012 Election
The wildly inaccurate pre-election polls in the Alberta 2012 election purported to show that the election was a “neck and neck” race between the ruling Progressive Conservatives (PCs) and the upstart Wildrose Party. With a month to go, the 24 polls that bombarded Alberta voters during that period suggested that Wildrose would win and even take majority power. Even the Ipsos Reid poll conducted on April 21, two days before voting day, put Wildrose at 41 per cent and the PCs at 32 per cent of the popular vote. Yet, in the end, all these polls, including the one by Ipsos Reid, proved to be very wrong. In the Alberta election, the PCs won 61 seats and the Wildrose won a mere 17 seats.
Albertans discussed the gaping difference between the pre-election polls and the actual election results. Most Albertans were not confused. Many suggested the polls were deliberately manipulated by Alberta’s ruling elite and their media to spread fear of Wildrose so that many “undecided,” “strategic,” and “new” voters would vote for the PCs and re-elect them, ensuring that the energy monopolies who run Alberta could keep in power a party that they were already used to doing business with.
The Party press wrote at that time: “It seems likely that the main purpose of pre-election polls is not to evaluate public opinion but to try to change it.”
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