All right so we just get the Russians to spend some money funding the conservative party of Canada via tiktok and then when they win the election we can say ha ha that’s illegal!
> so we just get the Russians to spend some money funding
Ya, that's illegal. If any political party conspired with a foreign state actor to get secret funding and targeted propaganda campaigns on Canadian citizens? You're ok with that?
I think you meant to say, if the foreign state actor independently without the local party conspiring with them, chose to back them up by targeting Canadians with messaging against the other parties and in support of the one they want to win, and you say that's illegal, that would seem wrong.
That I agree. But it still leaves a problem that Canadian have all been manipulated and deceived. At least if it is found out, people should know just to what extent the information they were fed was curated to them by foreign actors to influence you in aligning with their interests. And after that information comes out, if it was that a majority amount of it was, I think it would be fair to have a redo election. Now people could vote conservative again, if they assume that even with that knowledge, they still feel strongly about it.
I'd also add, for future elections, it really shouldn't be possible for foreign actors to target and curate information like that to local citizens, there needs to be safeguards of some sort.
The conservatives claimed precisely this about the last election, but investigators deemed the interference was not significant enough for a redo.
Foreign interference is one of the biggest threats to democracy today. I’d absolutely support a redo of an election, even if my party one, if it was found to be significant enough.
More broadly I think all democracies need to thinking about ways to handle this problem as it’s only getting worse.
.. probably yes, it would become illegal. I don't think that this is the absurdity you believe it is. It can even be the solution. If
* we want candidates to spend ~the same amount of money on campaign and
* Russia interferes
then the state, Canada or Romania, should block TikTok propaganda. What else?
Also I think that if the "same amount of campaign money" rule is proven to be wrong, and they want to go in an "anything goes" way instead, then they should redo the election, and they shouldn't accept the results with unfair conditions.
