Election's Canada investigating "Robocall" Guelph Riding (and other ridings).

[Senator Clay Davis]

First of all, I applaud her courage. It's never easy being a whistleblower, so kudos to her. Beyond that the obvious question is how high up this goes. I would expect Harper to try to get the MPs from the ridings involved to take the fall as collateral damage.

[Devils'Advocate]

Meh, Global and CTV may have picked up the story... but it's pretty much buried. Dick Clark, Khadr transfer request, gay rights activist killed.... it's nowhere near the front pages. It will be swept under the rug. Chretien and Harper know how to play politics and avoid most scandals. This will blow over without fanfare.

[Jacks]

You have to ask yourself if the telemarketers were identifying the party on the calls and if they were phoning Conservative supporters then why would they be lying about poll locations?

[IntenseFan]

Very, very interesting allegations in the affidavit.

I wonder why it has not been filed. There is no Federal Court filing stamp on it. Also, see the procedure list in that action from the Federal Court website: http://cas-ncr-nter03.cas-satj.gc.ca...rt_no=T-633-12

This shoud be current because according to the Federal Court website, the database for this action was last updated this afternoon: http://cas-ncr-nter03.cas-satj.gc.ca...select_court=T

Most of the other affidavits in that Action were filed on or very shortly after the date of swearing. This affidavit has not apparently been filed yet, despite the date of swearing being last week. Why are the applicants holding on to this and posting it on websites without filing it in court?

Strange...

[Senator Clay Davis]

The affidavit says intially she identifies herself as being from the CPC from Voter Outreach. When she identified who the listener was voting for, she either ended the call (NDP/Lib) or asked some questions (CPC). She then 3 days from the election begins calling (presumably, I don't think she specified) the NDP/Lib listeners she checked off and feeding them false information, thus sending them to wrong places, effectively eliminating a portion of NDP/Lib support.

[IntenseFan]

^ Quite right Senator. She did not specify whether she was:

a) Calling identified conservative supporters to encourage them to get the vote out to the proper place (which is legal) or;

b) Calling those persons who were not conservative supporters to mislead them to the improper place (which is obviously illegal).

So she has suspicions, but they need to be confirmed, probably by looking at the telemarketers records for the three days in question.

One more thing I would point out, I believe not identifying the fact that you are calling on behalf of a political party is an offence under the Federal Telecommunications Act. However, from the Elections Canada report, it seems that this particular provision goes massivley unheeded (it shouldn't).

[Senator Clay Davis]

I'd like to think it hasn't been filed yet because they are further corroborating her story before filing. Obviously this is a pretty big step in the process to discovering what actually happened.

[EddyBeers]

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/El...199/story.html

It appears that the investigation is branching out to other ridings, which is weird because the Conservatives said it was an isolated case. Sadly, the quote below is the reason why there must be a public inquiry.

Ferance said Dickson said it was likely that an investigation would take many months, and end without a conviction."He said most of these are agreements reached out of court," Ferance said.

[Shawnski]

Not sure how I am reading all of this, as it is just unfolding, but apparently the Robocalls have been traced back to a computer used by a worker for the Conservative candidate Marty Burke

Misleading robocalls originated from the same computer IP address used by a worker on the campaign of Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke, according to new court documents filed by Elections Canada.

Investigator Allan Mathews says in an affidavit that between April 30 and May 2, two unique computer addresses — one that links to a proxy server — were used to access RackNine by Burke’s deputy campaign manager Andrew Prescott and also by the person who paid for misleading robocalls sent to 6,737 Guelph-area numbers on Election Day.

Further down this article is this:

The affidavit raised eyebrows around Ottawa Friday when Mathews revealed another Burke campaign worker, Michael Sona, twice discussed using political dirty tricks and was twice “warned off” by national and local party campaign workers.

Matthew McBain, who worked in the party’s campaign headquarters “war room,” said Sona once spoke to him “about a campaign of disinformation such as making a misleading poll moving call.” The affidavit quotes McBain as saying he warned Sona off such conduct “as the party would not stand for it.”

Not to jump to conclusions, but the "smoke" tends to lead towards this Sona character as being a rouge actor perhaps.

Must read more, but here is the article in question.

[Fire]

Originally Posted by Shawnski

Not to jump to conclusions, but the "smoke" tends to lead towards this Sona character as being a rouge actor perhaps.

Must read more, but here is the article in question.

You mean it wasn't a party wide strategy to steal the election? The anti-Harper group won't be happy about this.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by Fire

You mean it wasn't a party wide strategy to steal the election? The anti-Harper group won't be happy about this.

I don't think it was a party wide strategy, but I don't think it was limited to Guelph either. I don't believe that this was all Sona. There were hundreds of calls made across the country and this kid wouldn't have cared to set that up.

How many calls like this do you think are acceptable though? How many voters can be knowingly and willfully mislead before you think that an open and transparent inquiry ought to be held?

[Smartcar]

Thanks for the link, I missed it (I think you mean "rogue", not "rouge).

I think it WAS a party wide strategy, maybe not everyone in the party but everyone who subscribed to the "win at all costs" (politics as war) mindset.

[Shawnski]

Originally Posted by Smartcar

(I think you mean "rogue", not "rouge).

Yup, but I am drinking bere ritgh now.

[Jacks]

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Bi...846/story.html

A comparison of Rogers billing records shows that "Pierre Poutine" did not use a computer in the headquarters of a Conservative candidate in Guelph, Ont., to launch the election day robocalls, casting doubt on the theory that any of the campaign workers could be the culprit.

This is the reason why Elections Canada should not be making allegations in the middle of an investigation.

[Smartcar]

Originally Posted by Jacks

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/Bi...846/story.html

This is the reason why Elections Canada should not be making allegations in the middle of an investigation.

To be fair, they're not, they're filing affidavits to support applications for warrants. It's the press that's reporting the filings, which are public. Once they get the warrants and the information it may not support the theory used to support the warrant.

Anyway all the article says is the IP wasn't the campaign office IP, not that it didn't belong to someone related to the campaign.

[Tinordi]

Just a shameful summary of the robocall scandal, how can you support this government in light of all of the issues that are circling it.

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/ful...ed-the-trigger

But as to the question of whether an electoral fraud occurred, of that the judge was in no doubt. He found that the calls were made, by the thousands, to scores of ridings nationwide; that they were not random, but targeted at non-Conservatives; that they commonly presented themselves, falsely, as being from Elections Canada, and provided false information about where to vote. Neither was he in doubt that they prevented at least some voters from getting to the polls, even if their numbers were not enough to be decisive in any riding.

And, troublingly, the judge found that this was no accident, nor the coincidence of a few bad apples with demon diallers. Rather, it was a deliberate and systemic attempt to subvert the democratic process, using resources ordinarily accessible only to a few: namely, the Conservatives’ highly prized Constituency Information Management System (CIMS). The evidence, he writes, suggests “there was an orchestrated effort to suppress votes during the 2011 election campaign by a person or persons with access to the CIMS database.”

It would be fair to call this a smoking gun. We just don’t know who fired it. As the judge writes, “there is no evidence to indicate that the use of the CIMS database in this manner was approved or condoned by the CPC.” However, “I am satisfied … that the most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC.”

On the face of it, that would suggest a short list of suspects. As the judge notes, “access to CIMS was limited to those who had been approved to have access by the CPC and who had been issued unique passwords.” He cites expert testimony that whoever made the calls would most likely have had, not only access to the database, but also “the financial resources to contract voice and automated service providers to make such calls,” and “the authority to make such decisions.”

Unless, of course, they were hacked. If so, these were some skilled hackers. As the judge writes, whoever accessed the database made “elaborate efforts to conceal [their] identity.” In the celebrated case of Pierre Poutine, in the Guelph, Ont., riding that appears to have been ground zero for the campaign, arrangements were made with the Conservatives’ automated call provider via a “burner” (disposable) cellphone, using a bogus name and address, and paid for online through a Saskatchewan-based proxy server using pre-paid credit cards.

Now, it’s always possible the judge has it wrong. Maybe there was no attempt to deceive. Maybe the people who reported having received such calls to Elections Canada were all lying, or mistaken; maybe the callers could have known who to call without having access to CIMS; maybe it’s all just a misunderstanding. But having heard the evidence the judge did not think so, and the likelihood of a wholly innocent explanation at this point seems vanishingly slim. This was fraud, and fraud on the grand scale.

And while the judge did not find there was sufficient evidence to conclude the fraud affected the election results, that does not mean there was no evidence. In four of the six ridings, a poll conducted by Frank Graves of Ekos Research found the number of those who said they were prevented from voting by such bogus calls exceeded the winner’s margin of victory. Not conclusive, to be sure, but disturbing.

Most disturbing of all is the Conservatives’ response. The judge is at his most scathing in describing the party’s determined efforts to, as he writes, “block these proceedings by any means.” Party lawyers engaged in “trench warfare in an effort to prevent this case from coming to a hearing on the merits,” raising a series of dubious procedural objections “in transparent attempts to derail this case.” Indeed, “despite the obvious public interest in getting to the bottom of the allegations, the CPC made little effort to assist with the investigation at the outset despite early requests,” even while the election was under way.

None of which proves anything. But it raises the same question that has been cropping up elsewhere of late: Is this the behaviour of people who have nothing to hide?

[Makarov]

^ Liberal media/judiciary conspiracy.

[Tinordi]

Recently this forum has really highlighted the downfalls of partisanship. Politics is not about rooting for your team.

[Flamenspiel]

^^ Thats right. Its really about what team you are on...

[rubecube]

And now we have Conservatives refusing to cooperate with investigators. This just keeps getting better.

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/He...961/story.html