Where are we? Well, right across the country. Only now, instead of just watching the TV news and wondering about the veracity of the reports, you can go look for yourself at archived comments that were posted one and two days before the last federal election.
Starting with the statement from the Chief Electoral Officer, then moving on to the digging done by one of The Gazetteers readers we move out of Guelph completely.
From the online comments of two people posted on 30 April 2011 and 1 May 2011 we have Halifax, Nova Scotia originated calls from the Conservative Party of Canada that went out to Fredricton, New Brunswick and to Mission, British Columbia.
Not robocalls - live calls. In both cases the caller attempted to mislead voters by announcing a change in voting location.
Does the thought, "centrally coordinated national voter-suppression strategy" start to drift through your brain?
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ReplyDeleteRMG has call centres in the following locations:
ReplyDeleteSt. John's Newfoundland; Miramichi, New Brunswick; Gatineau, Québec; Smiths Falls, Ontario and Thunder Bay, Ontario.
I wonder if they can set up satellites with say a 902 area code but with the script and supervision based in one of the east coast call centres?
BY: Yes. They can and very likely do share servers and number databases. Call centres' regional nature makes the useful for regional or local clients but they also coordinate and combine for national scale projects. A call centre worker in Miramichi sees the same screen as a their counterpart in T-Bay.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know why nobody (listening Bob Rae?) has called for UN international monitors to come in and audit this thing.
ReplyDeleteTrout. There's no need for such an action. We have Elections Canada and the RCMP empowered by legislation as institutions capable of investigating this, which they are presently doing. Places where the UN puts elections monitors do not have histories of free and fair elections nor the robust institutional mechanisms to ensure their fair conduct. It is a very long way from fraudulent phone calls to the need for international monitors in polling stations. We're still at the early stages here and have far from exhausted our in-house means of fixing this.
ReplyDeleteI hope you are right Boris. It's not beyond the cons to severely interfere with the public service as we know. Let's hope the investigators have two big hairy ones (each).
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