Election fraud in Canada

[blake 3:17]

This is a huge issue and has the potential for bringing the Tories down.

Elections Canada probe spreads to Thunder Bay
Issue 'blown out of proportion,' former campaign director says
By Laura Payton, CBC News Posted: Feb 29, 2012 4:54 PM ET Last Updated: Feb 29, 2012 6:15 PM ET Read 270 comments270

The Elections Canada investigation prompted by misleading calls to voters during the final days of last May's election is spreading, CBC News has learned.

The growing probe will involve interviews with some employees of a call centre based in Thunder Bay, Ont., operated by Responsive Marketing Group. The company was hired by the Conservatives to reach out to voters.

It was not immediately clear if the interviews in Thunder Bay are directly connected with the continuing investigation by Elections Canada in Guelph.

Earlier Wednesday, the man who ran the the Conservative Party's 2006 and 2008 election campaigns said misleading robocalls in Guelph are an isolated case.

Doug Finley, who advised the Conservatives on the 2011 election and sits as a Conservative senator, says the case of the strange calls has been blown out of proportion.

Opposition MPs have a list of 45 ridings they say were targeted by automated robocalls or live calls wrongly telling voters their polling locations had changed, or harassing calls late at night or on religious holidays.

The controversy's epicentre is in Guelph, Ont., where Elections Canada is investigating allegations someone from the Conservative campaign deliberately tried to suppress votes by impersonating the election agency in robocalls directing people to the wrong voting location.

It's illegal to prevent a person from voting and to induce somebody to vote or not vote for a particular candidate.

Finley says the Conservatives are co-operating with Elections Canada.

"There hasn’t [been] so far, as far as I can determine, one single issue of voter suppression — not one," he told CBC News. "To me it would appear it’s very isolated. If Guelph is where it is, it’s where it is."

Robocalling and live campaign calls are legitimate methods of campaigning used by all parties, Finley said. The calls cost pennies and some call centres in Canada are capable of making 200,000 to 300,000 calls an hour, he said.

"Quite frankly, this thing is blown out of proportion. That's number one," said Finley. "Number two … if there was a particular attempt at this voter suppression, in Guelph or anywhere else, I have no idea.

"This is the whole point, is that central campaign does not know because they had absolutely no idea what was happening."

The Conservatives use Responsive Marketing Group, Finley said, not Racknine, the call centre through which the Guelph robocalls were placed. RMG does live calls only, he said.

'Smear campaign'
In question period Wednesday, the Conservatives changed tactics, accusing the Liberals and NDP of being sore losers.

"This member and the members of his party have conducted a smear campaign against our party — a completely unsubstantiated smear campaign," Del Mastro said to NDP MP Charlie Angus.

NDP MPs pointed out that only the Tories have had to pay a fine for breaking election laws. Charges against Finley and other party officials were dropped as part of an agreement that saw the party pay $52,000 in fines for moving money from the national campaign to local campaigns and back in 2006, a tactic that became known as "in and out."

Conservative MPs had pointed to Guelph campaign worker Michael Sona, who stepped down from his job with MP Eve Adams last week, as being behind the robocalls. But in a statement Tuesday, Sona denied he had anything to do with it and said he resigned from his job because of the controversy over his involvement.

"I have remained silent to this point with the hope that the real guilty party would be apprehended," he said. "The rumours continue to swirl and media are now involving my family, so I feel that it is imperative that I respond."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/02/29/pol-robocalls-poor-losers.html?cmp=rss

[blake 3:17]

Walkom: Compared to robo-scandal Vikileaks is a prank
February 28, 2012

Thomas Walkom


The Vikileaks affair, in which a Liberal staffer released on the Internet publicly available details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ messy divorce, was at worst in bad taste, writes Tom Walkom.
CHRIS WATTIE/REUTERS
Ottawa’s Vikileaks and robo-call affairs are being treated as equivalents. They are not.

The robo-call affair involves allegations of electoral fraud. If, as suggested by Liberals and New Democrats, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives deliberately misrepresented themselves to voters before last May’s election, it is a serious police matter.

The Vikileaks affair, in which a Liberal staffer released on the Internet publicly available details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews’ messy divorce, was at worst in bad taste.

At best, it was an example of brilliant — if nasty — guerrilla theatre.

The robo-call allegations are twofold. One is that political operatives in some ridings (most notably Guelph) used live or automated telephone calls to direct voters unlikely to support their party to non-existent polling stations.

In some cases the callers fraudulently identified themselves as officials of Elections Canada, the non-partisan body that oversees voting.

The second kind of allegation, while murkier, involves claims that operatives posing as Liberals or New Democrats deliberately called undecided voters at inconvenient times — such as the middle of the night — in order to irritate them.

The aim here, it is alleged, was to make these voters so mad at the opposition parties that they would throw their support to the Conservatives.

In some closely fought ridings where these tactics are said to have been used, the Conservatives won by the narrowest of margins.

In Northern Ontario’s Nipissing riding, for instance, the Liberal incumbent lost to the Conservatives by 18 votes. In Toronto’s Etobicoke Centre, the Conservative candidate won by 26.

Altogether, complaints have been made in 40 ridings. In seven of these (six of which elected Conservatives), the margin of victory was less than 1,000 votes.

Suspicion has focused on the Conservatives in part because a Tory political aide involved in the controversial Guelph campaign mysteriously quit his job last week.

But the other reason is that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s party is years ahead of its competitors in modern campaign technology.

The Conservatives are particularly skilled at using telephone surveys to identify and analyze voters, including those who back other political parties.

It would be almost irresistible for a party with access to such detailed information to use it in dodgy ways, particularly if those making the decisions had no qualms about the means used to smash their opponents.

The Vikileaks affair, on the other hand, was a more old-fashioned, albeit legal, dirty trick.

It involved dredging up publicly available personal information — in this case the details of Toews’ divorce case — to discredit an opponent.

Politicians know they are all vulnerable to this kind of attack. So it should come as no surprise that Liberal interim leader Bob Rae moved quickly to fire the miscreant in his party who had done the dredging.

Rae knows that most adults, including Liberals, have secrets they would prefer to protect.

Still, the Vikileaks affair demonstrated a certain kind of poetic justice. In order to justify the government’s proposed intrusive Internet legislation, Toews had argued that only villains — such as child predators — want privacy.

The Vikileaker demonstrated that such a claim is patently false and that all of us — including Harper cabinet ministers — have portions of our lives we’d prefer to keep to ourselves.

Does this justify outing Toew’s complex marital past? I reckon I’d side with Rae here. Some things should just be left alone.

But whatever one thinks of Vikileaks, it was a schoolboy prank compared to the robo-call scandal. That one goes to the heart of how we choose the people who represent us. It’s deadly serious.

Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday.

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1138206--walkom-compared-to-robo-scandal-vikileaks-is-a-prank

[The Intransigent Faction]

Already knew Canada is not a democracy. The fact that even the veneer of one is weak just reinforces that point.

[Salyut]

This is a huge issue and has the potential for bringing the Tories down.

I wish I had your faith. :(

[NewLeft]

I wish I had your faith. :(
I doubt it will affect the tories..

[GoddessCleoLover]

Based upon my experience as a USA citizen who was around during Watergate it seems to me that short of evidence of Harper's involvement it is not likely to bring down a government. The Canadian Tories benefit greatly from a divided opposition, don't they?

[NewLeft]

Based upon my experience as a USA citizen who was around during Watergate it seems to me that short of evidence of Harper's involvement it is not likely to bring down a government. The Canadian Tories benefit greatly from a divided opposition, don't they?
The last thing we need is a united opposition.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Just be glad that you aren't down here with Willard, the Newt, and Sick Rantorum.

[blake 3:17]

The main strategy of the Harper Conservatives has been to centralize power in the Prime Ministers Office, erode bourgeois democratic rights, and push a hard right political agenda in areas where they can get away with it.

@NL
The last thing we need is a united opposition.

I sort of agree with you, but on what basis? I've found in recent years it harder and harder advocating a vote for the NDP as a class vote. Do you see parliamentary politics as relevant for the fight for socialism? Thoughts on the NDP leadership race?

@GG
Based upon my experience as a USA citizen who was around during Watergate it seems to me that short of evidence of Harper's involvement it is not likely to bring down a government.

It would depend on the number of parliamentary seats in dispute. The number is looking lower than before, but bits of new evidence keeps coming forward. A few seats up or down could push the Conservatives back into a minority position.

A not bad commentary from Tim Harper of the Toronto Star.


Tim Harper: Allegations of fraud, sleaze a turnoff to voters
Published On Wed Feb 29 2012Email Print (219)

Comments (219)

Prime Minister Stephen Harper parried allegations from the opposition during Question Period on Tuesday.
ADRIAN WYLD/THE CANADIAN PRESS

By Tim Harper
National Affairs Columnist


OTTAWA—Pierre Poutine from Separatist Street?

Why not toss a disposable cellphone registered to this fictional character into the toxic mess playing into the nation’s capital?

It played perfectly into the tenor of debate over the past couple of days, climaxed by a Tuesday Question Period dust-up over alleged election fraud in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper merely parried allegations of sleaze from the opposition benches by tossing their sleaze back at them.

It’s quite an appealing picture — previously anonymous Twitter details of a cabinet minister’s divorce, robo-calls by the NDP aimed at an MP who defected to the Liberals and sanctimonious stonewalling on the government side.

There may have been orchestrated vote suppression last spring, but there’s a lot of vote suppression going on here every day.

This country already has a problem with voter engagement, fuelled by an overriding view among many Canadians that their votes don’t count, that all politicians are the same, that they all play dirty.

They see broken promises, juvenile name-calling in the House of Commons and hyper partisanship trumping reasoned debate and hit the remote.

Three things have to happen, and happen quickly, before we all must gird ourselves for an even more disengaged electorate and a voter turnout in 2015 that could convulse the nation.

First, Canadians have to get angry.

When the Conservatives twice shut down this place there were sporadic protests and rallies packed with opposition operatives, but most Canadians couldn’t spell prorogue, let alone care about the ramifications.

When they were found to have violated Elections Canada spending rules in the so-called “in-and-out” case, Canadians not only yawned, they couldn’t understand the accounting skullduggery.

When they were found in contempt of Parliament, Conservative strategists boldly stated that a breach of an arcane rule would make no difference to voters, and they were right.

When they booted unfriendlies from their campaign rallies, limited journalists to a set number of questions and used supporters to boo the questions they didn’t like, the nation shrugged.

But, if there was a concerted effort to disenfranchise voters, this country can no longer shrug, or it deserves what it gets.

For a little inspiration, look to the women of the Responsive Marketing Group call centre in Thunder Bay whose stories were told by the Star’s Tonda MacCharles.

They have no dog in this fight, no political agenda, but they had a conscience and they felt they were doing something wrong, sending voters to the wrong polling stations on election day.

They went to the RCMP and Elections Canada and were largely met with indifference.

That shows why the second thing that must happen is the establishment of an independent, transparent inquiry to disentangle the various tentacles of this story.

If there is culpability, there must be accountability.

The Conservatives claim they were only targeting their own voters with their robo-calls and scripted calls.

They point out that 127 polling locations were changed by Elections Canada in the days before the May 2 vote.

“We have done absolutely nothing wrong,” said Dean Del Mastro, Stephen Harper’s parliamentary secretary, a blanket denial that screams out to be tested.

There are too many questions to limit this to a riding in Guelph or a call centre in Thunder Bay or a robo-call centre in Edmonton.

To dismiss these allegations as “shenanigans,” as one Conservative did in a conversation with The Globe and Mail, is to insult the Canadian voter.

Tuesday, Harper predictably turned the tables on Bob Rae, taunting him on the Vikileaks firing each time the interim Liberal leader raised the election fraud allegations.

The fact that he had the Vikileaks ammunition should serve as a wakeup call for anyone armed with social media, a robo-caller or a sympathetic journalistic ear and a score to settle.

That’s the third imperative — this type politics of personal destruction has to end.

If the high road is too high to be scaled, maybe it is best to appeal to the more base partisan instincts at play.

The old adage holds true — you play in the mud, you (and your party) gets dirty.

If Canadians don’t get angry, demand an independent probe and an end to the sleaze in this town, we’ll all be looking back at the 61.1 per cent voter turnout of 2011 as the golden age of Canadian democracy.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. [email protected]

[GoddessCleoLover]

The sad fact is that the Republican Party in the USA does shit like this all of the time. They are artists with respect to voter suppression. A GOP politico here in Maryland was actually criminally convicted for his activities, but the judge didn't sentence him to incarceration, just probation.

[blake 3:17]

GG, do you know Piven and Cloward's Why Americans don't Vote? Terrific book with loads of interesting history.

[blake 3:17]

9 ridings in BC alone are under scrutiny. Holy fr#ggin

Misleading B.C. election call traced to Conservative Party
Woman got repeated calls for donations then was told of polling place change
CBC News Posted: Mar 1, 2012 5:59 PM PT Last Updated: Mar 1, 2012 6:49

A Mission, B.C., woman says she was given misleading information by the Conservative Party a few days before the May 2011 federal election.

Astrid Dimond said she had been called six times for Conservative donations during the last election. After a seventh call, she said she did an internet search on the caller’s phone number, which had shown up on her call display.

"It came up as the Conservative Party in Victoria," Dimond said.

The next time she received a call from the same number, she told the caller she was supporting the NDP in the election in the hopes the calls would stop.

Two days before the election, Dimond said she got another call from the same number.

“[The caller] just said, ‘Did you know the polling station had changed,’ and basically, I said, ‘No it hasn't,’ and that was the end of the conversation. I wouldn't let her continue because I knew it was a falsehood."

Dimond said some of her neighbours were getting similar calls and they all knew the information was wrong.

Complained to Elections Canada
Dimond said she sent a complaint to Elections Canada about the aggressive and ultimately misleading calling.

In an email response to Dimond, the federal agency said that, "no issue of compliance or enforcement arises.”

However, the agency also suggested it was already aware that misleading or nuisance calls were being made.

"Your complaint will also be considered in context with a broader inquiry ongoing with regard to irritating calls that have been occurred during this general election campaign," Elections Canada said.

The "robocalls" issue has dominated House of Commons question period for most of this week.
The riding in which Dimond lives — Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission — has been held by Conservative Randy Kamp since 2004.

CBC News has been told about suspicious calls in nine B.C. ridings:

Burnaby-Douglas.
Burnaby-New Westminster.
New Westminster-Coquitlam.
North Vancouver.
Pitt Meadows-Maple Ridge-Mission.
Prince George-Peace River.
Saanich-Gulf Islands.
Vancouver Quadra.
Vancouver South.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/03/01/bc-suspicious-election-calls-dimond.html

[NewLeft]

I sort of agree with you, but on what basis? I've found in recent years it harder and harder advocating a vote for the NDP as a class vote. Do you see parliamentary politics as relevant for the fight for socialism? Thoughts on the NDP leadership race?

A united opposition.. with the liberals? Do they really want to merge with that mess? Anyway, the NDP doesn't want to be socialist to begin with.. Reform is great (does it build consciousness? I'm not sure..), but I know it's not going to bring socialism (it was explicitly made for the bourgeois after all..) With that said I would rather have Topp than Mulcair as PM. Thoughts? It would be nice to see Nash lead the party.. That's all I can say.

[blake 3:17]

A united opposition.. with the liberals? Do they really want to merge with that mess?

The differences keep getting smaller. The weird thing is that Bob Rae has been the most effective voice in opposition to the Tories. So gross. A genuine split in the NDP could be a good thing in the long run. Quebec Solidaire had its genesis in the NDPQ leaving the party. I only hear from the leftwing of QS and have a hard time assessing its strengths and weaknesses.


With that said I would rather have Topp than Mulcair as PM. Thoughts? It would be nice to see Nash lead the party.. That's all I can say.

Mulcair is scum. Topp is better, but that's not saying much, If I were in the party I'd support Nash, but WTF. Nash isn't proposing any kind of particularly radical political agenda.

The leadership race will be over soon. I think either Topp or Nash will get it.

A political and social alternative to the left of social democracy needs to be built and this is a long term project.

[NewLeft]

The differences keep getting smaller. The weird thing is that Bob Rae has been the most effective voice in opposition to the Tories. So gross. A genuine split in the NDP could be a good thing in the long run. Quebec Solidaire had its genesis in the NDPQ leaving the party. I only hear from the leftwing of QS and have a hard time assessing its strengths and weaknesses.

Yes, can Mulcair and his crew switch to the liberal party already..


Mulcair is scum. Topp is better, but that's not saying much, If I were in the party I'd support Nash, but WTF. Nash isn't proposing any kind of particularly radical political agenda.

The leadership race will be over soon. I think either Topp or Nash will get it.

A political and social alternative to the left of social democracy needs to be built and this is a long term project.

I hear you, but hasn't this been attempted several times?