Vote suppression effort too big to be a single rogue operative

All campaigns have the campaign worker who goes too far. Liberal, Conservative, NDP, Bloc or Green -- it happens.

It's regrettable but someone always misses to forest for the trees and, say, pulls down signs or makes phony calls (we saw that in Oshawa in the last campaign -- heck, my signs were coming down faster than we could put em up!).

But here we see a coordinated effort across a large number of ridings using the same technique. And at considerable cost -- I have paid for call centres and robocalls and they aren't cheap.

Someone with money, access to confidential lists and knowledge of national campaign strategy was behind the voter suppression here. It may well not have been the CPC centre (I doubt it was) but it was someone well funded and not far off:

"Elections Canada and police are looking into reports that automated calls in as many as 18 ridings falsely advised voters that the location of their polling stations had changed. In other instances, voters received harassing late-night or early-morning calls that purported to be from an opposition campaign office.
The Tories said they will provide information regarding the incidents to Elections Canada and urged anyone with knowledge of the calls to "come clean immediately."

The Liberals blamed the growing scandal on Mr. Harper, accusing him of fostering a toxic political culture.

"We are entering into a kind of Nixonian moment in our political culture, where all kinds of dirty tricks seem to be possible, all kinds of dirty tricks seem to be encouraged," Mr. Rae said – a reference to tactics used in the early 1970s by Republicans under U.S. president Richard Nixon.

The Conservatives have insisted they ran a "clean and ethical campaign," but the left open the possibility of a rogue operative being involved."

http://bit.ly/ArGgIZ