It is no mystery that candidates for federal public office, most of the time, go through a fairly vigorous vetting process. After all, people want to know they’re voting for someone who will represent them wisely, even if electors, more often than not, are voting against the other guy(s).

During Canada’s federal election, in British Columbia, two candidates from a single party have been forced to drop out due to videos surfacing on Youtube, while the leader of that same party is answering questions about another video. More recently, a candidate from a different party was put on the defensive about a blog post from the past expressing opinions that did not fall in line with his party’s policy.

Most of this content has been readily available for some time and some of the behaviour is consistent with the candidate’s profiles. For instance, if a candidate was previously a member of the Marijuana Party, it would not be a stretch of the imagination to suppose he or she may have used the drug. It is only because the online record of this behaviour is being dug up by opponents and rehashed by mainstream media, in the context of a federal election, that this matters and is damaging to the reputations of those involved.

Is this a postmodern version of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon? Are we requiring, as I saw one Facebook friend write, that our candidates be Philosopher Kings, perfect and fit for ruling with nary an error to his or her name?

As more people place their lives online, the record of behaviours, ideas and opinions that don’t fit into political policy or message boxes will grow—not that they never existed before—but this time they will remain for discovery by oppositional researchers, and an individual who may not live his or her life according to a writ of virtues may be precluded from serving his or her municipality, province or country.

Make no mistake, candidates should still undergo a rigorous vetting process, and some of the information that has come to light in this battle is drop-out worthy, but scrutiny should occur with an eye toward what will make contenders exceptional public servants rather than focusing on stumbles from a number of years ago.

As more candidates with preexisting online presences emerge in future democratic races, the public will better understand that context matters, and those who live their lives solely for the sake of public opinion may be those with pasts that raise questions of uncertainty.

(photo credit: PeregrinTouque)

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