Truly shocking — and unnecessary.

If senior people within the Conservative Party of Canada conspired to rig the May 2011 election, what are the consequences? For Stephen Harper’s party, the penalties could be very, very significant. They range from fines and jail time to deregistration of Harper’s party and liquidation of its assets.

A recap: As has been well documented in the media, Conservatives used automated, pre-recorded robocalls to contact voters in ridings across the country to provide them with false and misleading information about polling stations. Other voters were called late at night and, they say, harassed and intimidated.

The allegations even attracted the attention of the conservative Wall Street Journal, which reported the robocalls were a “scandal” in the making. At first, Conservative flaks denied the allegations. Then, late last week, a Conservative staffer who worked on the party’s election campaign in Guelph lost his job amid the growing scandal.

Tories clearly hoped the matter would end there. But, on Monday, a Toronto newspaper reported that former employees of the right-wing Responsive Marketing Group (RMG) had admitted to making in-person calls to voters to send them to the wrong polling stations. RMG is a shadowy outfit and bills itself in this way: “RMG works exclusively with right-of-centre campaigns to design and execute integrated programs that use direct mail, the telephone and online tools to … deliver results for our clients.”

One ex-RMG employee, Annette Desgagne, even told the RCMP and Elections Canada about RMG Conservative Party scripts containing clearly false information. “We’re sending people to the wrong place,” Desgagne told her boss.

If that is the case, Stephen Harper and his party are facing much more than a scandal. They have been implicated in a conspiracy that, if true, will shake the Conservative Party — and our democracy — to its foundations.

The revamped Canada Elections Act, contrary to what some Liberals and New Democrats may believe, contains many provisions that could apply to this growing outrage. There are 175 distinct offences spelled out in the Act.

Most relate to financial violations. But some clearly could be applied to what we already know about this disgusting file. If the allegations of the RMG employees are true, it is clear that “corrupt practices” have taken place. If Conservatives knowingly provided “false and misleading information” to citizens during the general election, they could be facing steep fines and jail time up to five years. Some could be barred from running for Parliament, or holding office. And there is even a possibility that the Conservative Party itself could be deregistered.

The Liberal Party deservedly paid a price for the Quebec sponsorship scandal. People went to jail, and the party has never really recovered.

This Conservative vote fraud scandal is arguably worse. It does not just involve the theft of tax dollars in one province. It involves the theft of an actual election, in ridings right across Canada. If the allegations are true, Harper’s party has debased our democracy, and made us look to the world like a banana republic. What is most astonishing, and sad, is that Conservatives may have engaged in election fraud when they were always going to win the damned thing anyway.