Ivan Savoie will not vote to designate the leader of the Quebec Party in May. The Independence Party has canceled its membership. And it is perhaps better as well, as Ivan Savoie is a cat.
Yet nearly all credit is due to the voice of the feline that has been accounting for this party in the in the leadership race. Ivan was previously well registered as a member of the party, like his brother Travis and his sister Rosemari, registered respectively the Liberal Party of Quebec and Quebec Solidaire. It’s the same case for Emilie Bordeleau, heroine of fiction “Les Filles de Caleb,” who died in 1946, yet somehow made the appearance.
Various parties apparently saw the fire and cashed in with their feline contributions in the amount of $5 that came in sections made by Journal de Montreal, the tabloid originally the superchArie. Cats and heroin were a way to check the reliability of memberships to parties.
Why anyone would fall under a false name? “Nobody realized the stratagem before The Journal, and did not contact the parties earlier this week,” said the publication.
Political organizations fessed up and admitted to not performing systematic verifications of the identities of their new members, having been working on the principles of good faith. Or at least that’s how it was explained by Andres Fontecilla, in the Quebec Solidaire. They didn’t see a reason why anyone would want to file under a false name. This confusion extended to even the ideas that one may use this tactic to inflate numbers in an attempt to rig an election.
The Parti Québécois rendered themselves unable to immediately verify the identities of these new members due to an overflow of work related to the influx of members for the leadership race, and they planned to check by way of ordinary phone calls, hoping to hear something other than the faint meows on the other line. In addition, each member must be identified by a photo ID when voting, this is just common sense and typical protocol pretty much for anywhere where voting is a thing. The excuse is a bit too “maousse” according to Eric Montigny, a political science professor interviewed by the Journal de Montreal. “The vote for the leadership will also be done by telephone if we’re unable to verify the identity of the members in person.”
Only one of the parties tested by the Journal de Montreal had rejected membership of Ivan the cat. “A new member has never before been accepted by means of a verified credit card including the right name and if it is on the electoral list. This was from the president of Future Coalition Québec (CAQ). In his defense, the party has a painful experience of electoral hoaxes. In 2009, “Omar Bongo” was able to vote for the presidency of the Democratic Action Québec, party, which has since merged with the CAQ. At the time, the joke was nearly highlighted in the electoral drama, as the winning candidate of this election had won only two votes, including that, fraudulent, of the late Gabonese president, who was hiding behind the team “Infoman,” a comedy television program.
André Lamoureux and Eric Montigny both thought the parties had learned from their mistakes, or at least its negligence to parties so hungry that they will stop at nothing to secure endorsements and their money flows. The theory has gained some traction with the analyzes of political science professors.