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Originally Posted by old-fart
Really need to seperate out the various complaints though. The "robo-dialer trying to send us to the wrong polling station" is a very serious issue and needs to be looked at very closely and those responsible held accountable.
Having said that, the opposition party trying to lump things like "they called at dinner time" and "they said Doctor Carolyn Bennet" and "they called on the Sabbath" and "they had a fake accent" as part of some grand conspiracy is idiotic. I'd suggest all parties made calls to people during inconvenient times, and all call centers probably have people with different accents that some idiot thinks is being faked to annoy them.
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Of course the most troubling issue is the alleged faked Elections Canada calls. I do think that there are issues with the alleged harassment calls though, and it runs deeper than is obvious.
If the calls were made to people in a targeted manner (that is to identified supporters of rival parties, as alleged), there is more at work here than just some rogue party worker or anything like that. Instead you have an obvious concerted effort where GOTV data was collected by the party for the election, and then released for this purpose. Could that be one person? Sure. If that took place though, it definitely calls a lot into question.
Obviously, if any party is harassing voters and doing their best to irritate them and misrepresent themselves as their opponents its at the very least trashy. It might not break the law (I'm no expert), but its a pathetic new low for Canadian politics if its the case.
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Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
Yup it seems like the opposition is jumping all over this to an almost obsessive nature before the investigation jumps its course.
Bob Rae was on the other night trying to link the caller thing to the Conservatives while not linking it to the conservatives.
The smart move for the opposition would really be to let the investigation happen and then decide your strategy.
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The opposition should jump all over this. If any party engaged in these activites I would expect nothing less of their rivals than to hammer them with it. There is no strategy required really; if a party acted in these ways then they should have to answer for that. Believe me, if the Liberals or NDP were implicated the attack ads would already be running!