How's this for "transparency"? Anne Lagacé Dowson:
"The Conservatives’ latest voter suppression tactic is what is called "robo-calling" – fake phone calls directing voters to the wrong polling stations. These calls are standard operating procedure for Republican right-wingers in the U.S. Now they are apparently part of the Tory playbook.
The calls went out to ridings where the races were close, and where the difference between winning and losing is a couple of hundred votes. People were told to go to the wrong place to vote in B.C., Manitoba, Ontario and the Atlantic region. The phone messages told voters that their polling place had been changed because of high turnout. Elections Canada never calls people like that, but most people trust such a call when it comes."
To my way of thinking - which apparently is not that of the Harper crew - being "transparent" means being open, honest, above board in dealing with others. It means probity, frankness - yes, at times it's needed, "telling it like it is". Above all, transparency is the opposite of dissimulation, "dirty tricks". And these are U.S. Republican style dirty tricks: not a good sign. One talks the moral "high road" and walks quite a different way..
At this early date, Elections Canada has been informed of the dirty tricks played the last few weeks of the campaign but has made no judgement. Rogue Conservative supporters may, of course, be responsible but this remains to be proven.. See, for example, CBC radio's The Current, May 11, 2011 for a discussion with an American author who wrote a book about his work as a Republic hatchet man (he spent time in prison for it):
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