Thucydides said:It occurs to me, especially now that it appears Conservative voters also got misleading directions via Robocall, that the real issue is inaccurate information in the databases that were being used.
Based on some of the stuff I get from other government departments from time to time, that seems much more likely than any other explanation...
Media cherrypicking ATIP material is FAR from news, folks, so we shouldn't be entirely surprised. Perfect example: 800+ pages released, here's what pops up:Rifleman62 said:Note that the Media Party, including Postmedia, accidentally, of course, left out this from all their media reporting:
“There was no conduct reported that would bring into question the integrity of the election result overall or the result in a particular riding. Although misconduct was reported in several ridings, there is no complaint that it affected the final result. There is some speculation in the media that the dirty tricks may have affected the result in some close contests.”
The opposition also left out this when manufacturing this "scandal".
Pushing back on robo-calls, Tories blame Liberals for electoral mischief
STEVEN CHASE
OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update
Posted on Thursday, March 1, 2012
Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are fighting back in the wake of opposition allegations the Tories arranged for pre-election calls impersonating the Liberal Party to alienate Grit voters.
These accusations are different than the robo-call controversy in the riding of Guelph – now under investigation by Elections Canada – where voters were told to head to the wrong polling stations.
Liberal candidates and voters have been complaining in recent days that annoying calls were made in the run-up to the election by callers identifying themselves as working for the Liberals. Interim Leader Bob Rae has suggested it hurt the party’s political fortunes in the May 2 election.
But The Tories suggest it was the Liberal Party’s own get-out-the-vote operations that were making the calls and said the burden should be on Mr. Rae to prove it was otherwise.
The Liberals allege hundreds of voters received phone calls at inconvenient hours from people presenting themselves as being Liberal Party workers. In an apparent bid to alienate electors, these calls arrived at supper time, late at night or on the Sabbath for Jewish voters.
The Conservatives, however, suggest it was merely ham-fisted Liberal calls.
The Conservatives say public records show Liberal ridings across Canada spent more than $1-million on firms such as First Contact and Prime Contact that telephone electors to seek support and call people to gauge their support.
First Contact calls itself “the leading Canadian supplier of call centre services to Liberal candidates and office-holders in Canada.”
Long-time Liberal MP Joe Volpe, who was defeated in the closely fought Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence last year, complained that electors were flooded with repetitive and harassing phone calls, falsely made in his campaign's name.
Call display showed the calls as originating in North Dakota, he said.
Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro, the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, pointed out however that Mr. Volpe’s own riding spent money on voter-support call firms such as Prime Contact. It has offices in North Dakota.
“Joe Volpe paid over $25,000 to Prime Contact, a company with offices in North Dakota,” Mr. Del Mastro told the Commons.
A B.C. Liberal Party candidate has public acknowledged that calls they arranged to solicit voter support also showed up on call display as coming from the United States.
Former Liberal candidate Diane Janzen told The Chilliwack Times last April that this occurred because calls arranged with the aid of First Contact relied on a computer “based in the U.S., similar to other patented software for computers.”
E.R. Campbell said:And here, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the Globe and Mail, is a much more likely explanation for the harassing phone calls:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/pushing-back-on-robo-calls-tories-blame-liberals-for-electoral-mischief/article2355453/
The simplest explanation for calls that purport to be from the Liberal Party of Canada is that they are from the Liberal Party of Canada.
Re: robo-calls ~ if Prime Minister Harper is confident enough to make the bold "not guilty" assertions, in the House, that he has then I'm guessing that he knows who made the calls and there is no connection to the Conservative campaign and, possibly, not even to Conservative supporters; it may have been a disgruntled former worker who was making mischief just for spite.
Scott said:Betcha can't convince Kalatzi though, ER. It's Harper and that name means guilty.
Crantor said:He isn't. Others might be though.
Easy, now - let's stick with picking apart the message*, not the messenger.GAP said:Isn't that the one who wants to pick up t*&^s by the clean end?Scott said:Betcha can't convince Kalatzi though, ER. It's Harper and that name means guilty.
The Conservatives have linked their Liberal rivals to an American speed-dialing company amid ongoing allegations of harassing phone calls during the 2011 election.
The accusation comes as an increasing number of reports emerge that Canadians received automated calls on election day from mysterious phone numbers, some with U.S. area codes.
In Parliament Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae should reveal his own party's alleged links to the scandal.
"We've done some checking," Harper said. "We've only found that, in fact, it was the Liberal party that did source its phone calls from the United States.
"I wonder if the reason the honourable leader of the Liberal party will not in fact show us his evidence is it will point in fact that it was the Liberal party that made these calls."
Harper's comments come nearly a week after a young Conservative campaign worker left his job amid accusations about the so-called robocalls scandal, in which allegedly misleading calls were made to voters on election day. The scandal centres on allegations that voters were told polling stations had moved.
But while the Conservatives have been on the defensive for the past week, Harper attacked the Liberals on Thursday and linked them to a U.S.-based automated calling service.
One calling firm, called First Contact, advertises itself on its website as: "the leading Canadian supplier of call centre services to Liberal candidates and office-holders in Canada."
The company's website also states that it has "since contacted over 8 million voters on behalf of more than 800 clients" across Canada.
First Contact President Mike O'Neill told The Canadian Press that his company was not involved in misleading or harassing calls.
In Parliament, the Conservatives repeated their claim that the voter suppression allegations are a "smear" campaign orchestrated by "sore losers" from the last election.