"Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand announced Thursday that he now has "over 700 Canadians from across the country" who allege "specific circumstances" of fraudulent or improper calls. CBC News examined 31 ridings where such calls have been reported and found a pattern: those receiving those calls also had previous calls from the Conservative Party to find out which way they would vote.
Tim McCoy of the riding of Ottawa-Vanier was one of those who complained to Elections Canada. He received a bogus recorded message pretending to be from Elections Canada — but he also had two previous calls from the Conservatives.
"They did call me back from the Conservative Association and ask if they could count on my support," said McCoy, who declined to pledge his vote. He thinks that's why someone tried to mislead him.
"It looks like a hijacking of the democratic process," he added. "I would like to know who made the call pretending to be from Elections Canada and I don't really care which way the finger points. I would like to know."
Elections Canada says it never calls voters at all. However, it is only now emerging that calls impersonating Elections Canada followed previous calls by Conservative workers asking which way voters were leaning. That suggests that the "Elections Canada" calls, which are illegal, came from people with access to data gathered by the Conservative Party, which carefully controls access to it.
Asked about that, party spokesman Fred Delorey had no comment and declined an interview.
The pattern of legitimate so-called "Voter ID" calls, followed by bogus "Elections Canada" calls, occurs in ridings across the country.
Charles Cochrane of Saint John, N.B., made it very clear to the Conservatives that they did not have his vote. Then, on election day, he said, "The phone rang and it was a recorded message. This is Elections Canada calling, your polling station has now changed." He checked. It had not changed."
6 comments:
I think the CBC has been fishing a bit on this one.
This story doesn't pass the sniff test.
It has gone from 31000 complaints to 700.
What is the sniff test?
Most of the 31000 contacts were from people who signed a petition to investigate the fraud. The remaining 700 are actual complaints. The CBC made this quite clear.
''...found a pattern: those receiving those calls also had previous calls from the Conservative Party to find out which way they would vote....''
Omg, how stupid.
Robo calls are done by riding/region, everyone gets a call, no matter how they vote.
700 complaints across Canada, so that's like 2 per riding....
If true, 2 per riding seems like plenty.
Con supporters, who claim the rest of us are "soft on crime", sure are soft on this potential crime.
When you consider that 40% did not vote it follows that 3/4 of the adults in this country are "not Conservative".(Using the logic presented by the CBC.)
How many of these voters are "not Liberal"? 90% of adults would be considered "not Liberal".
Therefore a vast majority rapists are "not Liberal".
The point is that random calling would target "non Conservative" voters by at least a margin of 3:1 ;Even if there was no effort to target them.
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