Questions! We have questions.

#elxnfraud #Cdnpoli - 

Here's one:

Why is one of the three CIMS reports downloaded by Andrew Prescott - phone numbers identifying supporters and non-supporters - now missing from CIMS?

A simple explanation, one which would pass muster with any one of the tech geeks who hang around our small group, would be appropriate.

Want more? Alison. Go read Alison. 

Robocon Guelph - the technical hypothesis

#elxnfraud #Cdnpoli - 

Zorpheous has done a great job of squeezing out the technical aspects of the Guelph Conservative election fraud scandal.

If you haven't read it, go now.

If you're in a rush, here's something very important:

[I]gnoring the other 199 ridings that are being investigated, there is the very important point I made at the beginning of the article.  Someone with Administrative Rights to the CIMS database blanked out the log records which point to the Poutine List pull.  Now I am fairly certain, that no one in their right mind is going to allow people who are under suspicion of being Pierre Poutine or who are even associated the Burke Campaign to be allowed access to the CIMS database in order to prep a copy of the database that is intended to be sent to Elections Canada for this investigation.  So it is obvious that we have a person higher up the CPC food chain actively and knowingly attempting to cover up this crime.

As Zorpheous makes clear, the only way to delete the records which have apparently gone "missing" is to deliberately overwrite them and that requires someone with Administrator Privileges.  In a network that is commonly referred to as a superuser and it's a safe bet that the CIMS database didn't extend that flexibility down to the riding level.

If we couldn't say "conspiracy" before, we are certainly getting closer to being able to attach that label now.

Robocon and election fraud

#robofraud #elxn41 #elxnfraud #cdnpoli #RMG #Xentel #CPC -





So we'll start with ... no.

Just go read Alison, and make sure you're sitting down. Or you could make some popcorn and then take a seat.

And look what floats to the surface (updated)

 #cdnpoli  #elxn41 #robocon -

You're welcome! And thank you RossK.

Elections Canada investigators on the trail of the "Pierre Poutine" suspect in the robocalls case have been asking questions about the actions of staff at Conservative party headquarters in Ottawa.

Nearly a year after the investigation began, the agency is trying to determine why database records provided by the party appear to be missing entries that could help identify who downloaded the phone numbers used to make fraudulent robocalls, according to a source familiar with the probe.

Investigators also are inquiring about a phone call from Conservative headquarters, made the day before the election, to RackNine, the Edmonton voice-broadcasting company whose servers were used to send out the robocalls.

And why is this significant? Well ... (emphasis mine)

Also of interest is a call to RackNine made on May 1, the day before the vote, from a number in the Conservative party war room in Ottawa.

The number is listed as belonging to Chris Rougier, who was identified as the party's manager of voter relation programs. It usually rings on his desk at party headquarters on Albert Street in downtown Ottawa, but was forwarded to the party's south Ottawa war room for the duration of the campaign.

Rougier was a key member of the target seat team, working directly under campaign manager Jenni Byrne, acting as a liaison with vendors providing telephone services to the campaign.

That would be the same outfit that we identified on on March 2nd, right here. And it was commenter Beijing York who put us on the trail.

Now, back over to The Gazetteer for a wee bit of election fraud entertainment. (Check out the footnote section).

More more more:  Dr. Dawg called it a long time ago. You know, that little thing that happens when there are records? Gaps. And SaskBoy has more.

Sixth Estate draws a conclusion: The Harper Conservatives know who Pierre Poutine really is. 

The attempt to minimize something massive

Anyway you slice it, the testimony of Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, before the House and Procedural Affairs Committee on 29 March was bombshell stuff.

Overshadowed to some degree by the detail deficient and ideological platitude spouting of Jim Flaherty, what Mayrand had to say carries a level of importance that shouldn't be lost in loudness of a so-called budget from the Harper rodentia. (There will be some comment on that later).

I've already covered, by simply allowing Kady O'Malley to do the heavy lifting, the most serious revelation: the enormous scope of the election fraud which occurred in May 2011. (Keep that link on a separate tab if you want to follow).

It wasn't one riding; it wasn't 23 ridings; it wasn't 37 ridings. It wasn't even the "possible" 100 ridings which many observers (including myself) believed might have been at issue. That latter number would have put us in massive "hijacked" territory and the subverting of one-third of the electoral districts in Canada. It was 200 ridings - two-thirds of the federal electoral districts. 

The next thing that jumped out was the geographic breadth. If the whole effort had been perpetrated in a cluster of ridings in one province it could be attributed to the efforts of one person or perhaps one small group. However, Mayrand made clear just how wide it was: Ten provinces and one territory. The material breadth of the act was nationwide.

The timing and the modus operandi is also important. In almost every case we know of so far, people receiving calls on the day before or the day of the election had been contacted by some element promoting the Conservative Party of Canada. The next call directed them to bogus voting places.

The scope and the timing are more than a little significant. They're huge.

Perhaps it's decades of military training and my experience as a front-line "death technician" that routes my thinking, but I cannot think of any way to pull off a geographically massive, narrowly timed operation without at least four things in place: planning, coordination, deception and delegation1. In a criminal enterprise it is described with one word: conspiracy. 

So, now we come to the evidence of an attempted spin from the likes of Harold Albrecht and Tom Lukiwski. Both of them, after hearing the breadth and scope of complaints being investigated by Mayrand's office suggested that they were not trying to minimize the the importance of the complaints nor the numbers being discussed. (11:53 and 11:55 of Kady's report).

Yes, they were.

The fact that they actually suggested they weren't attempting to do so meant that the questions they were posing would be viewed as an attempt to minimize and then they went on to ask them anyway. Clearly, they were shocked by what they had just heard.

All the signs point to a planned, coordinated and specifically-timed national effort to suppress the opposition vote using illegal means. And to add to the elements required to pull off something as large as this appears to be, the direction of such an effort has to come from well up in the hierarchy of a group. In a disciplined, authoritarian-led organization, independent action over a wide scale usually fails.
---------------------

1 For those so inclined: You can draw some interesting parallels by reading this. I would draw your attention to page 110. The belief that nobody would violate the seeming reverence of an idea, held to be universally sacred, has tripped up more than one strategist.

800 complaints; 200 ridings

Go read Kady.

Now.

Brace yourself ...

For a day of unusual confusion.

This is Harper/Flaherty Budget Day. We will find out ... hold it. Oh! Some people already know!

The Conservative government will ask millions of Canadians to push back their retirement as part of a landmark budget that stresses bold action now to position Canada’s economy in the face of major demographic changes to come. 

Ottawa will unveil plans Thursday to delay Old Age Security benefits until age 67, The Globe has learned, confirming Prime Minister Stephen Harper's long-telegraphed blueprint for retirement reform. The OAS changes will be phased in over a number of years, creating a generational divide between Canadians who will receive the benefit – worth more than $6,000 a year – at age 65 and other Canadians who will have to wait longer.

I doubt Flaherty will be "asking" anybody to do anything. It's not his style. He much prefers to stick it to others and then laugh. And we might point out that he has a security problem. That's one leaky document.

Elsewhere, I expect those who believe there is an opportunity to get grip on the illegal activities which occurred during the last federal election will be somewhat disappointed. Keep your eye on Canada's top parliamentary committee junky. No matter what happens, (and I think it will go largely off topic), Kady will be tempting carpal tunnel syndrome to get the information out there. 

Voter suppression goes to court and committee

The Council of Canadians, representing electors in seven ridings where "irregularities" have been clearly reported, is pushing the voter suppression scandal into federal court.

A citizen advocacy group is asking the Federal Court of Canada to overturn election results in seven ridings where telephone dirty tricks may have kept voters away from the polls.

The Council of Canadians says pre-recorded robocalls and live calls influenced the outcome of votes in closely fought races in British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Yukon and Ontario.

The group is backing the first legal challenge of election results since the Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News revealed ongoing Elections Canada investigations into misleading election day calls in Guelph and other ridings.

The organization's lawyers filed four applications in court on Friday and was due to file three more Monday, all seeking have the results of the votes set aside.

The applications claim that irregular, fraudulent or illegal activities affected the outcome in each of the seven ridings.

All of the ridings named were won by Conservative candidates and all but one was decided by fewer than 1,000 votes.

This challenge is an application to have the results of the last election in those ridings declared invalid. A court challenge of this kind can be tricky but it does open the doors to compelling all candidates to turn over records of their campaign activities. Impolitical provides some details and speculation that is well worth noting.

The other event on the voter suppression horizon is the appearance of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand before a parliamentary committee. The ploy by the Harperites to schedule that appearance at the same time that the bulk of the Ottawa press corps will be sequestered in the budget lock-down demonstrates the childish nature of the Harper government, and that's about all it does. Given the obvious focus of Postmedia reporters Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor you have to ask yourself which event you think an editor would have them assigned to cover that day. 

Right.

Then you have to ask yourself, would the Harperites really have extended an invitation to Mayrand if they thought he already had incendiary evidence of Conservative election-rigging? 

Nope. 

And before anyone goes off half-cocked, the latest consistent bad habit of the Harperites, (conducting committee hearings in camera), would leave the Conservatives totally screwed in this case. Remember that Mayrand asked for this appearance. Since this deals directly with electoral issues, shutting the doors and booting out the public would only serve to reinforce the belief that the Harperites have something extremely sensitive to hide. 

The Sixth Estate has an excellent prognosis that is a must read.

Vancouver Island North again

On Feb 28th CHEK TV in Victoria reported a voter suppression call in the riding of Vancouver Island North. At that time it was a live call made in the town of Woss and it appeared to be the only incident.

Now it seems to have spread and this report is indicating there may have been automated robo-calls misdirecting voters to non-existent polling stations.

The Vancouver Island North NDP candidate in the May 2011 election said Wednesday several people complained to her recently about receiving automated phone calls directing them away from legitimate polling stations.
“I thought it was a non-story (in this riding),” said Ronna-Rae Leonard, who finished a close second to incumbent Conservative MP John Duncan.
Then the city councillor in Courtenay started to hear from concerned voters who said they had been misled by automated calls.
Cumberland resident Yvonne Kafka said an automated call told her not to vote at the usual polling station in the village, although she confirmed the location and voted.
“If they did it to me, they must have done it to other people,” said Kafka, who has not heard back from Elections Canada about her complaint.
Leonard said a Merville resident told her she was misdirected to the former Tsolum School to vote after she had voted for years at the Merville Hall. The woman, who declined Thursday to be interviewed or identified, told Leonard she was interviewed by Elections Canada.
One woman in Comox told Leonard a call “was directing her to the Comox Mall to vote, where there was no poll.” Leonard said the woman, who had not given Leonard permission to identify her, did manage to vote.
Leonard said she suspects people have not come forward before now because they suspected misleading calls were just a hoax, and they didn’t see the gravity of attempting to defraud voters.

 John Duncan, the Conservative incumbent, won the seat by 1827 votes in a 66.4% voter turnout.

------

Now, over to visit The Gazetteer, where he has read Prof. Anke Kessler's draft paper on voter suppression and makes a report. As RossK points out, since Kessler's paper, (which focused on the initial 27 ridings), the spread of the contagion has become more widely known and is now into triple digits.

Pull thread to unravel

The Sixth Estate has a very cogent theory on how the voter suppression effort during the last federal election may have unfolded. It's important to read the whole piece but for those of you doing this on the short ...

As April 2011 careened to a close, there were a few pollsters willing to stick their neck out and predict a Conservative majority, but the general consensus was that they would not quite achieve that mark. Moreover it was generally expected, particularly among Conservative ranks, that the NDP and the Liberals would not put up with another Harper minority. Instead they would join forces, and, absurd as it might have sounded even two months  before, the late Jack Layton would be prime minister. Harper’s career would be over. So would those of the coterie of pseudo-intelligent political strategists with which he’s surrounded himself.

So, at some point in that last worrying week of April, the decision was made to order several different units to do what they could to suppress the vote, using tips and tricks they’d picked up from campaign training sessions with American Republicans. We know these sessions happened, we know that these sort of dirty tricks are quite routine fare (for both parties) south of the border, and, in fact, in some states deliberately misdirecting people to bogus polling stations isn’t even against the law.

I’m not sure who these units were. Maybe they were inside the Target Seat Management Unit. Maybe they were in the Conservative Resource Group. Maybe they were just whatever little network of local campaign staffers were personal friends of whichever senior strategist decided to activate Plan B. Whatever it was, they weren’t entirely prepared for it. They had a general idea what to do, but they hadn’t planned it out in advance — again, because if they had, they would have done a better job of it.

From the perspective of the individuals activating the covert op, there would have been no real downside. If they won a majority, they would be able to stonewall Elections Canada from now to judgement day, or at least until the next election. (This was actually happening, until Postmedia broke the story wide open in February and suddenly Elections Canada decided it should be seriously investigating the case after all.) If they lost and the NDP seized power, what would it matter? Their careers would already be over anyways, and the NDP would be too busy enjoying their newfound power to look too carefully into a vote fraud scheme that hadn’t even worked anyways.

That's about the way I would break it out, although I would add a few other features.

There is a reason we do not allow the young lieutenant or brand-new sergeant to plan and execute delicate military operations, especially those which require enduring cover. They always leave stuff out. That's not because they're stupid; it's because they haven't had the sense of invincibility beaten out of them yet. It's one thing to be able to produce a covert action plan; it's quite another to be able to plan it in enough detail to have it executed without leaving evidence behind.

One of the common threads of those whose names keep appearing, (and that is not to say that they are guilty), around the voter suppression issue, is their relative young age. Behaviours involving high-risk, without consideration of possible consequences, tends to fall into the arena of young males. That fits the analysis provided by The Sixth Estate. A quick look at the two outcomes of a covert operation would not reveal the pitfalls to be avoided. The whole thing looks like a very poorly planned operation executed with arrogant invincibility. Not the work of a seasoned campaigner.

There is another dangling thread which may have panicked the Harper campaign. The Christian conservatives, a considerable force in the minority Harper-base, were not happy. They wanted their people elected to a majority Conservative caucus so as to put the squeeze on Harper himself. Some wanted to see themselves in enough control to replace Harper. A minority victory would give them as much ammunition as they needed to turf Harper into the gutter.

Even if a minority showing did not result in an NDP led coalition government, (which I believe would have happened), the Harper faction of the Conservative party would have been toast. In a party with no clear field of succession, the loose fusion of western separatists, Christian conservatives, racists and right-wing authoritarians would have likely collapsed in an all-out pig-fight for the leadership.That aside, again, the only way the Harper loyalists could possibly keep their jobs was to squeeze out a majority to fend off the threats from within their own party.

That brings up something of a post-script. Simon puts the bristles onto Speaker Andrew Scheer and his involvement in the Guelph riding. Far from being non-partisan, Scheer is a member of the faction which would have exiled Harper to the wilderness in another minority government. In a majority however, although wholly unsuited to the position, he becomes the HoC head referee. As much as I believe there is some quid pro quo involved, I also see Harper's Dionysius to Scheer's Damocles.

The literalist, authoritarian, Christian right cannot be discounted as possible players in the whole affair. But that's for another time.

Partisan to the core

I suppose it was all in the spirit of "giving".

The political machine behind the man who is now Speaker of the House of Commons opened its wallet for the Guelph Conservative campaign currently under scrutiny by Election Canada’s robo-calls probe, records at the watchdog agency show. 

Less than two weeks before the 2011 election, Andrew Scheer’s Regina-Qu’Appelle riding association in Saskatchewan transferred $3,000 to the Guelph Conservative campaign for candidate Marty Burke. 

Elections Canada records suggest this was the only Conservative riding association outside Guelph to transfer cash to Mr. Burke’s campaign during the writ period.  

The smell is starting to permeate the robes.

Does voter suppression change the result?

Looks that way.

Via Creekside we get some simple and easy to read crunching from Brian-Michel, complete with this graph:

 

Of course, Dean del Mastro will be sent out at some point to state that no one can prove people didn't vote simply because "somebody" executed a strategy to mislead voters. Oh right ...

There is more, of course. Anke Kessler has done a rather thorough statistical analysis where she concludes:

In 27 of the 308 ridings, voters allegedly received automated phone calls containing false information on the location of their election site, or harassing them in the name of one of the contestants. The results suggest that, on average, voter turnout in those ridings affected by the demobilization efforts is significantly lower than in the ridings where no automated phone calls have been reported. The point estimate gives 3 percentage points.  As such, the effect is considerably smaller than the 50 percent reduction in turnout that Barton (2011) finds.  But since nothing is yet known about the total numbers of voters that actually have received a phone call,  if any,  those numbers are not comparable. Besides, Barton’s results are based on a framed-field experiment with little consequence of failing to go to the polls and it may be difficult to draw inferences regarding actual elections.  In either case, Barton also reports that pre-election warnings against possible fraudulent messages inoculates voters against misinformation effects, and generally restores voter turnout.   If his  findings are taken at face value,  the  outlook is positive: having been warned, the Canadian electorate should now be guarded against any future attempts at demobilization.

Now, I'm pretty certain the average person would find Kessler's paper extremely difficult to read. It took me several reads to be able to agree with the conclusion above. It is worth reading the Introduction from the bottom of page 1 through page 2. As opposed to using just riding data, she bores into individual polling station statistics. What Kessler assesses is very telling.

On average, voter turnout was 3 percentage points lower in those ridings from which complaints had been received as opposed to ridings from which no such complaints had been received. Using the average such riding as a benchmark, this translates into roughly 2,500 fewer voters at the polls.

Oh yes. Before dismissing Anke Kessler as some university student trying to make a name for herself, be aware that she is Professor Anke Kessler, Ph.D. in the Economics Dept. at Simon Fraser University. 

One point made by Prof. Kessler that should bode well for future elections is that the electorate will be much more wary of attempts to suppress the vote.

That may be cold comfort if we have to put up with Harper and his vile brand of politics for a full four to five years. And, of course, there is another problem. Given that all evidence points to the Harper campaign as the perpetrators of a voter suppression effort, we have no idea what desperate tactic they will engage in an attempt to hold onto power. Unless we figure it out first.

Further good read.

McKnight (updated)

Well, there's a name we haven't heard yet. The team of Maher and MacGregor have hit a new one.

A key employee of the company that was used to send out the misdirecting robocalls in Guelph on election day appears not to exist under the name he uses online.

RackNine, the Edmonton company that suspect "Pierre Poutine" used to send voters to the wrong polling locations, is operated by Edmonton businessman Matt Meier, with the help of Rick McKnight, who is identified variously as head of marketing and web developer.

But Postmedia News and the Ottawa Citizen are unable to find anyone who knows McKnight, even though he has a healthy online identity, including 551 Facebook friends, many of them prominent.

Meier and his lawyer declined Monday to clear up the case of the mysterious McKnight.
Until recently, McKnight was listed as web developer on the LinkedIn business website, the only other North American employee with a listing under RackNine. His entry says that he studied computer science at Stanford University, and that he was born on Jan. 1, although it doesn't list the year.

Of course it gets better. (My emphasis)

Meier, who is said to be helping Elections Canada with their investigation and has repeatedly said he had no knowledge of the "Poutine" robocalls, has declined to comment on McKnight's identity.

In an interview, when asked how a reporter could get in touch with McKnight, he said "you don't," and hung up.

Goodness me! That can get you a senate appointment.

Now, if you haven't been reading The Gazeteer, you are now.

Here's another one for you. (I'm going to get into some shit for this).

Once, in a place not so far away, I had more than one identity. Completely approved by the government that approved it. I was not 007. I was just some yob that needed to be hidden from public view. That was before the internet.

And it worked.

So much for Matt Meier's squeaky clean Oh-Double-Nothin' in the morning discovery of "Pierre".

Update: Go to comments and read what Beijing York has unearthed. 

And the attempt to repair the break

As RossK points out, there is a serious attempt on the part of Conservative party operatives (and their selected tame journalists) to contain the election fraud issue to Guelph. In short, the theory that it was a "rogue" caller and nothing else happened. From comments in this post Alison reminds us of this from CBC reporter Terry Milewski:

"We now have, thanks to John [Iveson], the list of numbers called by Pierre Poutine. Now where did those come from? Well, the Conservative Party, according to John's story, is likely to use this to show that it was more limited than many people thought - it was kind of Guelph plus extra.That raises the question where did they get this list of numbers? Where did the Conservatives get it? Why did the Conservatives have it?"

On CBC's The House, Milewski was having none of Iveson's attempt to limit. As he points out there were robocalls that went well beyond the "Guelph +" fallout area. He also reiterated the point that there were plenty of live calls which used similar tactics.

I'll repeat the big question, which Terry Milewski above has put on the national table, and which The Sixth Estate asks:

These phone records, if they’re legit, are evidence of election fraud. The proper place for these records is in the hands of Elections Canada investigators. The fact that the Conservatives have them can only mean one of three things:

The Conservatives got the records directly from Racknine. I’m not sure how that squares with Racknine’s previous claims that they are a non-partisan organization and that the call order in question didn’t come from the Conservative Party (which would mean, presumably, that they shouldn’t be sharing the records with an unconnected third party).

The Conservatives got the records from Elections Canada. This would suggest either that the Conservatives have a mole on the investigation team, or that Elections Canada is under political control by the very party that it’s currently supposed to be investigating.

The Conservatives got the records internally. This would suggest they already know who the perpetrator is — and may have known all along.

On The House, Iveson, after almost slipping, stops short of stating that Matt Meier of Racknine provided the list of the numbers called to the Conservative Party insiders.

So, Iveson's theory, (and you can bet this will be the regurgitated Conservative line), is that it's just Guelph with a little bit of fallout drift, it's just one "rogue" person and the central campaign had nothing to do with it.

Terry Milewski's reporting provides evidence that it is much, much wider than that.

As RossK points out in the bottom of his post:

Have you noted the new meme....That if it wasn't a call wherein the caller, Robo or otherwise, identified him or herself as being from Elections Canada, it was not illegal....Again, it would appear that folks are trying to limit and circumscribe the hangout as much as possible to he or she who soon will be, we imagine, scapegoated...

There seems to be further rumbling that any calls that went out from ridings were the work of riding workers and there was no central effort.

So why then, do you need this?

The Shattering

You could make book that there are a lot of phones busy and nobody is sending anybody to a non-existent voting place. But that's what's being discussed.

Ian Brodie, Harpers chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, had this to add to the voter suppression file:

Something seems to have gone on, on a scale I’ve never seen before

Hard to disagree with that. Brodie, a Harper insider, is now contradicting Harper and Del Mastro who have both been denying anything and everything.

Over at The Sixth Estate the big question. The Conservatives apparently have access to campaign phone records and, since they are the subject of an investigation, it is only proper that we know how it is anybody under investigation came to be in possession of them.

A few days in May

There was a bright shining light on the morning of Tuesday, 3 May, 2011. Unfortunately it was shrouded by the gloom felt by most people who had headed to the polls the day before.

A majority of Canadians who voted had cast their ballots for someone other than the candidate running under the Harper banner yet, owing to an electoral process which recognizes plurality, Harper had achieved his dream of personal power with a parliamentary majority.

That upset created a whirlwind of media activity, speculation and (for some) loud rejoicing. There were three BIG stories that dominated the morning of May 3rd: The Harper majority; the crushing defeat of the Liberal party; and, the rise of the NDP as the new Official Opposition. You could shuffle the order of those stories any way you liked, but that was pretty much it.

Which meant the bright shining light, which had been ignited the day before, was now stuffed behind a closed closet door. Almost nobody noticed.

As Alison points out, however, it was there the whole time, staring us in the face. In those early days of May evidence of election wrongdoing was readily apparent and, by the morning of Tuesday, 3 May, 2011, there was every indication that it was deliberate, calculated and expansive.

It was washed over almost immediately. In ridings with close races 2nd place finishers who complained about voter-suppression tactics were dismissed as sore losers. Voters who complained were drowned-out by the celebratory noises of the likes of Rex Murphy and a narcissistic media punditry performing an electoral postmortem which focused on little more than their own navels.

Canadians, who had come to believe that elections in this country were scrupulously clean and well managed, (despite attack ads and irritating invasions of the telephone system by all parties), were, for the most part, glad just to have the damn thing done and over with. Execrable acts of election fraud would only prolong the agony of the previous 36 days (which Harper had managed to turn into years with the endless campaign)

The perpetrators of the strategy to suppress opposition votes were counting on exactly that.

I don't know of any organization the size of a national political party which does not perform a post-event analysis. It is how they stay efficient. In the case of a federal election all political parties would have carried out a detailed dissection of the operations of their campaigns to determine what worked and what didn't. That would include this unit of the Harper campaign.

It is also well-known that large organizations, whether they be corporations, churches, government departments or national political parties, watch media items related to their activities like a hawk. Message management, (something the Harperites treat as a religious item), requires never allowing a potentially damaging item to drift around without at least some prepared tactical response.

And that means that the same items which Alison has shown to have been in public view in those early days of May 2011 were a part of the scrutiny that most assuredly was carried out by the Harper campaign immediately after the election. They knew then that there was a bright shining light and they would have prepared for any exposure. From May 2011 to February 2012 they were trying to cover up.

Any competent party leader would also have been aware. In May, 2011.

That would mean that Harper knew, chose not to know, or is just plain stupid.

Intent, not outcome, is the basis for criminality

Dean del Mastro is getting desperate.

Del Mastro, who has been leading his party's defence in the controversy over live and automated election phone calls, said nobody has come forward to say they didn't vote because they first went to the wrong polling station.

"So where are these people? Where are these people? Where are these people saying that I got the call, I went to the wrong station, and then I didn't vote?" Del Mastro said on CBC's Power & Politics.

"There haven’t been any. No one has stepped forward and said that."

"Some of these things, as I've already indicated, could have well been mistakes. I don't understand why folks jump to these things and run to a conclusion that they have no evidence of."

Mistakes?! Parties were told not to direct voters to polling stations. He's claiming "mistake" as a defence?

You walk into a bank with a toy gun and demand the all the available money (in small bills) but encounter an operation where the customer service associate has no money.

You flee.

The cop outside captures you.

In court your attorney stresses to the judge that you didn't actually get any money. It's not really a robbery and the gun wasn't really a gun, but a toy. It's all one big mistake.

The Criminal Code section 85 (2) says your toy gun is still a gun. Section 343 says you attempted a robbery. Enjoy prison because you get a five year minimum sentence.

We have evidence dripping off the walls, and Del Mastro is very close there to shifting his defence to the right - we did stuff but it didn't prevent anyone from voting.

The illegal act was doing stuff. 

Toto. I don't think we're in Guelph anymore.

A short summary (with links).

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?

Marc Mayrand: With Much Pleasure - Now please send invitation (Updated)

The Chief Electoral Officer has something to say, and he'd like to say it to a parliamentary committee.

Immediately following the 2011 general election, the Commissioner of Canada Elections deployed resources to investigate complaints of fraudulent or improper calls. Since then, over 700 Canadians from across the country have informed us of specific circumstances where they believe similar wrongdoing took place.

Watch that figure closely. 700 reported. That will be the figure the Harperites fling around. They will need to be reminded that they told us this.

Update: Mr. Mayrand might want to discuss some of this.

Royal Commission?

Bad idea. Now, take that down and give your heads a shake.

An exceptionally informative piece on the type and timing of any public inquiry into voter suppression and other electoral irregularities, (Yes. I'm looking at you, with the blue frigging cravat), is right here.

The investigation must be allowed to continue  - unimpeded.

I personally believe the Harper election campaign was dirtier than an overnight disposable diaper, but the investigators need to be able to develop findings.

The trick is to keep an eye on Harper. He is going to start maneouvring to protect his ass. The thing is to keep it fully exposed by pulling his pants down at every opportunity.

We've all been playing defence with Harper and his mob. As Noni Mausa says, it's time we out-maneouvred them. As the start of this episode has demonstrated, when Harper is caught off-guard, he doesn't come off as much of a leader. So ... be ready for his next move and be prepared to cut him off at the knees. (Figuratively of course. It would be wrong to leave a mess for whomever displaces him).