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Canada's Conservatives Misled Voters With Massive Robocall Operation

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-offsides dept.

choongiri writes "Elections Canada has just traced thousands of illegal phone calls made during the 2011 federal election to a company that worked for the Conservative Party across the country. The automated VOIP 'robocalls' appeared to be designed to stop non-Conservative voters from casting ballots in key ridings by falsely telling voters that the location of their polling stations had changed, causing them to go to the wrong location on election day. This news casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of Canada's Government. The Conservatives narrowly won their 'majority' by 6,201 votes in 14 ridings, with only 39% of the popular vote." For those as unfamiliar with the term "riding" in this context as I was, here's Wikipedia's explanation.

9 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Re:More disturbingly... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Solution: Ban all robocalls and livecalls for election purposes! I am sure that Canadian would benefit from this.

  2. Re:Blame Canada by Bieeanda · · Score: 4, Interesting

    American mainstream news generally doesn't give a shit about international events unless it involves celebrities, celebrities dying, normal people dying en masse, or distant places that the government claims to be warring with or policing. Canadian politics simply aren't worth column inches, unless it directly affects the States or the media's ability to follow a story.

  3. A New Election by whisper_jeff · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I strongly hope this leads to a new election (with very strict oversight). Clearly the last election was tampered with in such a way that the outcome was altered, thus a new election is needed. While I hate elections, I hate knowing a party wrongly gained power even more.

  4. So glad our country keeps making the home page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Unfortunately, I'm less glad the subject seems to keep being our Harper Government(tm) doing some technologically backwards (ACTA, the C-60 DRM bill, the C-30 internet spying bill). And now they've descended into outright voter fraud - having inherited the other sleazeball methods of US right-wing politics (attack ads, stupid "tough of crime" policies, etc.)

    I hope a number of people go to jail for a long, long time over this. From what we can tell, this occurred in dozens of ridings including a number that Conservatives only won by less than 100 votes. The Cons have thrown one staffer under the bus (incidentally, he was caught trying to grab a box of ballots and run out of a polling station as well last year, but yet, managed to stay employed with the party) - but there is no way he could've gotten all the voter info and done this on such a wide scale.

    Personally, I hope that the RCMP gets involved, pulls the logs from the robocall company, and each and every seat won by the Conservatives where cheating was involved is recalled. Yeah, it'll be expensive - but so is three more years of these Nixonian, Stasi-like unethical dirt bags in office.

  5. This is currently an issue. by SolemnLord · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So far one staffer has resigned as the allegations have landed, in what appears to be a case of falling-on-the-sword-itis. The scale of the scandal is actually pretty massive. As TFA points out, these calls have been confirmed to appear in 18 ridings, and others are being suspected. In those 18 ridings, the calls only hit households that were waffling Liberal (as per recent polling).

    What this means is that someone had to plan the calls, get the party affiliation information on these 18 ridings (at least), hire RackNine, hire a bilingual voice actor, and see everything through. The likelihood of one person pulling all this off is next to nil, and it doesn't help that the Conservative party has a (rightly deserved) reputation for bullying and playing dirty pool with the rules.

    And since it's going to come up, the Conservative Party of Canada is actually the result of a merger between two separate parties: the original Progressive Conservatives, who were the centre-right answer to the Liberal's centre-left, and the Canadian Alliance-née-Reform party, the country's (relatively)-far-right party. Prime Minister Harper was previously a member of the Canadian Alliance, and it's safe to say that his view, regardless of his party's, doesn't represent the overwhelming majority of Canadians. He's not all bad, but I will throw a party he is unceremoniously dumped from the Canadian political scene.

    1. Re:This is currently an issue. by SolemnLord · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've always felt the Harper was one of the only things keeping the Conservatives in check, and the reason for his somewhat authoritarian style is that a lot of his MPs are pretty far off the deep end so he needs to keep them under reign.

      I agree and I disagree. Harper certainly had to keep his MPs in check, but that seemed to matter more when he was running a minority government than now. You didn't hear a peep out of the fringe MPs up until the Conservatives had a majority. Without the need to appeal to Canadian moderates who would have voted for the Liberals otherwise, Harper is showing less interest in holding back the fringe MPs, and more interested in ramming his legislation down our throats. It was practical intra-party authoritarianism.

      As for who might be responsible, I started writing up things and realized that I was probably sounding paranoid. I think that the Nixon comparisons being made in the Globe & Mail are warranted, but I admit I could be wrong, too.

    2. Re:This is currently an issue. by rs79 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Whether he's to blame or not, he's accountable.

      And he is far, far from innocent. This is about a oil sands. A long long time ago Canada was - not so much - an oil producing nation, then they figured out how to get oil out of the oil shale ("tar sands"). Suddenly Canada had a few trilliion dollars of goo to exploit. What does a country do when it finds a windfall like that? Help its poeple or exploit the shit out of it and get what you can on the world market (then blame the Suadi's for the price of oil)?

      At the time the PM was Pierre Trudeau, as fine of a PM as this country has ever known. Now, some countries, like, oh, Britain, consider fuel to be an essential resource and it's nationalized. Trudeau made some noise that maybe that wasn't a terrible idea and Canada want to do something *like* that.

      Boom. That was it. Suddenly from out west a new political party popped up, the "reform" party, With the usual American style Fear-Uncertainty-Doubt they managed to scare the electorate to the point where they trounced the more liberal conservative party to the point where it had only 2 seats, then consumed it.

      And who was the guy that spearheaded the reform party out west and ushered in a USA style way of doing things? Steven Harper. Who used to live in Toronto.

      Starting with the first oil crisis in the late 70s American big oil interests have pumped a lot of money into Canada to get the government they want - and they got it in the form of Vice President Harper who gave us Bush's wars and we sell all the oil to the US - America gets most of its oil from Canada and very little from Saudi check for yourself.

      Canada has enough oil and so few poeple that we could be having twenty-five-cent a gallon gasoline or heating oil - the latter being pretty important in a country that gets -44 degree weather and relies on oil in rural settings almost exclusively. Instead the oil is sold to the US at Saudi prices and American oil companies benefit.

      No PM in recent history has done more to damage Canada than Harper. And oh look, it wasn't even a legitimate vote. Is there any doubt we're the 51's state or that _Syriana_ could be re-shot in a more, um, northern clime?

      --
      Need Mercedes parts ?
  6. Re:More disturbingly... by Muros · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Not just jail time. Make them pay for the cost. All of it. Re-run the election in constituencies where this happened, and make the culprits pay the cost. And time & travel expenses for those who spent time driving about to the wrong places. $60 an hour and $0.50 per mile sounds fair to me.

  7. Re:More disturbingly... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hell, it's even better. Here we have some guys caught, apparently, and they will hopefully get punished - but will they redo elections in the affected districts? If not, then it seems like you cheat, get caught and still get to run the country...