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Comment by a-priori | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of the 2019 Canadian federal election. There was a new party in that election led by a man named Maxime Bernier called the People's Party. They're a far-right populist party and generally awful. Bernier himself was running in Beauce, Quebec, which he had represented through the Conservative party since 2006 before he had created the People's Party.

But then the Rhinoceros Party, a satirical political party, announced a new candidate for Beauce named... Maxime Bernier. When asked about the confusion, the Rhinoceros Party's Maxime Bernier said, "If you're not sure, then vote for both!".

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/maxime-bernier-rhino...

The Conservative candidate won with 22817 votes, the People's Party candidate came second with 16772, and the Rhinoceros Party candidate came last with 1072 votes and another 1147 were rejected. This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament.

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Well, in Canada (and I'd assume elsewhere, but I've not checked) our ballots include party affiliation, so it's pretty easy to tell the candidates apart if you're paying any attention at all.

The US's does as well. That's why I don't understand why people are up and arms. People aren't getting names confused, they're seriously don't care.

In WA the ballots have a statement from the person saying “X prefers the Republican party” or similar but there are no endorsements allowed.

Partly this is because of the way primaries work here (they are open and there is no “official” party-backed candidate).

Anyway, there is nothing stopping a candidate from claiming they prefer a party that they don’t actually hope to represent.

> This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament.

Note that even if the Rhinoceros votes went for the peoples party the same thing would have happened...

> Note that even if the Rhinoceros votes went for the peoples party the same thing would have happened...

Which is probably for the best. If this type of trickery had made a meaningful difference, the people fooled by the trick would have had some legitimate complaints. Moreover it would have really undermined the credibility of the winner, even if it wasn't their doing.

Maybe it's a shame that nothing of consequence hinged on it. If someone was aggrieved, we're more likely to get a court case out of it and the law changed.

True, this probably didn't actually change the results, but it likely narrowed the margin in an already narrow vote.

You and I have very different understandings of the word narrow.

That's 58% vs 42% just counting the votes that went to the PPC/Conservatives. 39% vs 28% looking at all the votes in the riding. The rhino candidate got less than 2% of the votes in the riding.

It definitely didn't actually change the results.

Is it possible that such a move may dissuade voters from even showing up to the polls to participate in an election that they view as a sham, or as being made a circus? It certainly doesn’t build trust in democracy.

In general I'm sure that's a possibility, and it probably occurs in the Russian case. In Canada we are quite confident in our electoral system, and this sort of shenanigans doesn't change that (or result in substantial confusion, since we clearly spell out candidates political parties - indeed I suspect most people vote based on party more than based on candidate name). I don't believe for an instant that this had a substantial effect on the PPCs voter turnout.

> This left the People's Party with no seats in parliament.

"This" implies that the Rhinoceros Party prank KEPT Bernier from having a seat. Simple math shows that's not the case.

It appears that Maxim Bernier from the Rhinoceros party hasn't registered to run in this year's election. I wonder if they've been blocked from doing so?

> There was a new party in that election led by a man named Maxime Bernier called the People's Party. They're a far-right populist party and generally awful.

Describing the PPC as "far-right" is a good way to out yourself as far-left.

It’s not much of an “outing” to reveal that I believe the Canada they want is antithetical to my belief system, and that I find the party thoroughly disgusting and worthy of mockery.

Again, to describe the PPC as "far-right" is to make a mockery of reality and out yourself as far-left. It doesn't matter if you think they're "antithetical to your belief system".

Or are you one of those childish people who throw around "far-right" as a synonym for "anything I don't like"?

If PPC is "far right", can you imagine how far left Canadian liberals must be.

They're the only party to oppose vaccine passports in Canada. So can't be all bad. Polling around 5-8% now and gaining, high enough might make a big difference who next leader of Canada will be. On the conspiracy side, some are speculating he's a plant to help Trudeau.

Cbc's polling average has them at 4.8%, which isn't inside your 5-8% interval... but it's true that they have been slowly trending upwards... though whether you should prefer a momentum model or a reversion to the mean model for polling variation is unclear.

Separately, giving airtime to ridiculous conspiracies that even you don't believe is simply not helpful.

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