Western Standard - March 24, 2022


FILDEBRANDT Facing defeat, Kenney rigs the vote


Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

167.54196

Word count

1,191

Sentence count

58


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Jason Kenney is facing defeat in his leadership vote on April 9th, but the party brass is already making changes to make voting easier and more convenient for all party members. Will he lose the leadership vote? Or will he prevail?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 The people who cast the votes decide nothing.
00:00:02.620 The people who count the votes decide everything, the old saying goes.
00:00:06.680 In Alberta, it's not necessarily the counting that has to be rigged,
00:00:10.220 but how the ballots are cast and who is allowed to cast them.
00:00:14.540 Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, facing probable defeat in his April 9th leadership vote,
00:00:19.740 has had his party brass change the rules to pull his chestnuts out of the fire.
00:00:23.840 Late last year, 22 constituency associations in that party
00:00:27.100 effectively recalled Kenney by passing a resolution that would trigger a special general meeting.
00:00:33.420 This resolution's demands included that the vote be as open to as many party members as possible
00:00:38.900 with voting locations across Alberta.
00:00:41.600 But at the party's annual general meeting in Calgary last November,
00:00:45.220 Kenney's allies pushed for a change to the UCP constitution
00:00:47.840 that would have raised the bar for recalling the leader from 22 to 29 associations.
00:00:53.080 That attempt to change the rules failed, and the resolution went forward.
00:00:57.960 But faced with a hard demand for a leadership review vote,
00:01:01.200 the UCP brass agreed to a vote in principle, but decided to set their own rules.
00:01:06.700 Instead of multiple voting locations across Alberta, accessible to all the party's members,
00:01:11.680 the party decided upon a single vote at a location in Red Deer on April 9th,
00:01:16.820 with a registration fee that ranges from $99 to $150.
00:01:21.780 Kenney's reasoning was that this was obvious.
00:01:25.620 He's a legendary organizer and a strong fundraiser.
00:01:28.620 He would have had a decided advantage in a contest that hinges more on the ability to raise money,
00:01:33.700 sign up people, register them, and drive them to and from a distant voting location.
00:01:38.140 This advantage, however, hinged upon Kenney's opponents not being funded or organized.
00:01:44.800 Unfortunately for Kenney, they appear very much to be both of those things.
00:01:49.380 Take Back Alberta, an organization working to recall Kenney,
00:01:52.580 has proven to be very efficient at holding hundreds of gatherings across the province
00:01:57.380 with angry Albertans turning out in significant numbers.
00:02:00.340 Those angry voters are then encouraged to become angry UCP members
00:02:04.900 and then angry Kenney Leadership Review voters.
00:02:08.780 From the numbers that I've seen, and it is now likely that Kenney has seen,
00:02:13.600 those angry Leadership Review voters are poised to decisively send Kenney into early retirement on April 9th.
00:02:20.340 By the March 19th cutoff for new members to sign up in time to vote,
00:02:26.220 more than $13,500 had paid their $99 to register.
00:02:31.880 Take Back Alberta's internal data showed them with a minimum of 60% of the registrations
00:02:36.940 as identified anti-Kenney voters.
00:02:39.820 With as many as 20,000 people who could potentially vote by the time April 9th came along,
00:02:44.660 it was logistically impossible for the vote to be conducted in a single afternoon
00:02:48.880 at a single hotel in Red Deer.
00:02:51.060 The party had good cause to add more capacity to prevent a chaotic meltdown on voting day.
00:02:57.760 Senior sources in the UCP told the Western Standard that they intended to add
00:03:01.440 new polling locations in Calgary and Edmonton.
00:03:05.260 Voting in those two cities and Red Deer would be conducted over three days.
00:03:10.260 There was already worry that these new voting locations were designed to make it easier for Kenney
00:03:15.820 to mobilize voters in ethnic and religious minority communities that he's courting with a message
00:03:20.360 that his opponents are fueled by, quote, racism, hatred, and intolerance.
00:03:26.680 Kenney's assumption that in-person voting, with a price tag of $99 to $150,
00:03:31.600 plus a long drive with expensive gas, would be to his advantage, has proven to be wrong indeed.
00:03:38.060 Kenney's UCP supporters are fewer in number than his opponents,
00:03:40.620 and, most critically, not nearly as motivated.
00:03:44.260 This steep barrier to voting, which was intended to help the Premier,
00:03:47.860 turned out to be to his disadvantage once the campaign got underway.
00:03:52.660 Both sides saw their internal data and know where they stand right now.
00:03:56.600 Based on the rules originally set by Kenney's board,
00:03:59.560 he was very likely set for a major defeat.
00:04:02.880 But this is Tory land.
00:04:04.400 It's not necessarily the counting that has to be rigged,
00:04:07.620 but how the ballots are cast and who is allowed to cast them.
00:04:11.120 And so that's exactly what they changed.
00:04:13.920 On March 23rd, the party announced it was radically overhauling the rules.
00:04:18.800 Not with adding new voting locations and a few days in other cities,
00:04:22.780 but with doing away with in-person voting altogether.
00:04:26.220 Instead of members needing to be motivated enough to pay $99 to $150
00:04:30.580 and drive to Red Deer and back, members can vote by mail.
00:04:34.440 That's it.
00:04:34.940 UCP members need only fill out a paper ballot and submit it in the mail.
00:04:40.700 Firstly, the enthusiasm gap between Kenney's supporters and opponents
00:04:44.180 becomes much less important in this case.
00:04:47.500 Instead of giving up money in an entire Saturday,
00:04:50.660 UCP members can now just vote by mail.
00:04:53.520 Kenney's supporters may not have been willing to do that much
00:04:57.360 to keep him in his job,
00:04:59.760 but they will be more likely to stuff an envelope in the mail.
00:05:02.740 Secondly, the potential for shenanigans is much greater with a mail-in vote
00:05:07.580 than with in-person balloting.
00:05:09.500 There is still an active and ongoing RCMP investigation
00:05:12.640 into alleged voter fraud over Kennedy's 2017 UCP leadership campaign
00:05:17.560 involving mail-in or online balloting.
00:05:20.500 None of those allegations have been proven in court,
00:05:22.840 but the matter seems to be very far from closed.
00:05:25.140 A moderate change in the rules.
00:05:27.660 Even this late in the game would have been in order
00:05:30.300 if it didn't fundamentally alter the rules and objective of the game.
00:05:35.440 Adding additional polling stations in Red Deer or even Calgary and Edmonton
00:05:39.380 would have been reasonable.
00:05:41.340 But this?
00:05:42.700 This is altering the objective of the game altogether.
00:05:45.800 Instead of requiring touchdowns,
00:05:48.480 each side needs to put a ball through a hoop.
00:05:51.420 There are still two teams trying to win,
00:05:53.160 but they're now playing an entirely different sport
00:05:55.160 three quarters through the game.
00:05:58.000 Maybe this rules change will be enough for Kennedy
00:06:00.720 to rescue victory from the jaws of defeat.
00:06:03.680 Maybe the Rebels will overcome him anyway.
00:06:06.020 But one way or another,
00:06:07.680 this not-so-subtle attempt to rig the rules in favor of Kennedy
00:06:10.780 will poison the well if he manages to hang on.
00:06:13.520 Even if Kennedy manages to eke out a win,
00:06:18.100 his opponents will rightly be able to point to this moment
00:06:21.200 when he had the game changed for his political benefit.
00:06:25.680 With Brian Jean entering the legislature,
00:06:28.280 either as a UCP or independent MLA,
00:06:30.480 who knows,
00:06:31.660 two independent conservative MLAs already in exile,
00:06:34.300 and a large number of rebel MLAs still in the UCP caucus,
00:06:38.140 it's very easy to see how a Kennedy win under these circumstances
00:06:41.420 would trigger a mass exodus from the UCP.
00:06:45.500 It may go in the direction of the Wild Rose,
00:06:47.800 which enjoys 10 to 15 percent in the polls already
00:06:50.480 and some considerable constituency-level organization,
00:06:53.600 or to a new rebel conservative party entirely.
00:06:56.580 If Kennedy continues as leader of the UCP,
00:06:59.440 it would very likely spell the end of the United Conservative Project
00:07:02.940 and see the return of a major insurgency on his right.
00:07:06.300 Thank you.