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. 

Not just a pattern. A strategy.

As Dawg says, a pattern is emerging. It is more than that however.

The discovery that phone calls directing voters to non-existent polling places was targeted to a specific age group, in this case voters over aged 60, reveals a strategy.

Most of those who received an automated phone call telling them their polling station had been changed say they were previously contacted by the Conservative Party and indicated that they would not be supporting their local Tory candidate.

Now federal elections officials say that the fraudulent phone calls targeted older voters.

“Every single person I’ve contacted has been (born) between 1947 and 1949,” said one unidentified Elections Canada employee who was following up on the complaints Friday morning.

That's strategic targeting.

The revelation suggests that whoever was behind the fraudulent robocalls that are now the subject of a massive investigation may have been working off of a more sophisticated list of electors than the barebones voter information provided by Elections Canada.

Enright said that the list of voters that all political parties and local candidates receive during an election period contains only the names and addresses of electors. Combined, parties spend millions of dollars during a campaign to identify likely supporters as well as non-supporters and target them for donations and other forms of support.

It also suggests that the Conservatives have done some deep data-mining beyond what the they told their own ridings in their CIMS presentation. The Conservative CIMS, designed to track voters, uses the federal voters list and many other sources to create an accurate database. In the Power-Point presentation the central campaign made to riding campaigns none of the displays, offered as examples, shows any information which reveals the age or date of birth of the voter. If the CIMS training given to riding campaign workers is accurate, the riding had no access to voters' ages.

That raises three questions:
1. Where did they get the information?
2. What is actually stored on the CIMS database and has the CPoC collected information on Canadians which infringes on privacy rights?
3. Where is it stored and who had/has access? This outfit?

Target Seat Management Unit sounds so ... special forces, doesn't it?

In effect, that's what it is. It is an election campaign action squad of the Conservative Party of Canada.

Their job?

Concentrate efforts to win swing ridings for the Conservatives.

From the Hill Times in Dec 2008

Crestview Public Affairs Co-founder Mark Spiro
Mr. Spiro is a "brilliant mind" who was a key adviser and top organizer on the federal Conservatives' recent electoral successes. He focused on helping the Conservative Party win several of the swing ridings in the last election to increase their seat count in the House of Commons by 20 seats.

In charge of the Target Seat Management Unit. (I absolutely love that name!)

From the Hill Times Sept 2009

Mark Spiro, a senior Conservative who in the past campaigns was in charge of target seat management, is returning to the same role.

From the Hill Times April 2011

One Tory said Mark Spiro, founder of Crestview Public Affairs who was a federally-registered lobbyist in 2006 and 2007, is once again helping the Conservative war room's target seat management unit, as he was in the 2006 and 2008 campaigns.

So, when RossK and I noticed a line in Lawrence Martin's column on the Conservative shenanigans in Saanich-Gulf Islands during the 2008 federal election ...

Mr. Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, was categorical: “Nobody has ever asked me to do dirty tricks.” But it’s conceivable they were done without his knowledge. The party had a separate team, he said, that worked on swing ridings.

It forced us all to look a little deeper. Is Mr. Giraud pointing a finger? Certainly he wasn't pointing at himself and we can easily marry up his description with the Conservative Target Seat Management Unit.

(You just can't know how much I actually love that name. They should all have little unit patches on their left shoulder. Something like a cell phone with a thunderbolt through it. And a motto! They should have a motto. I'd suggest an informal one from my old unit but I'm pretty certain we're still using it. You fight dirty; We fight dirty).

Over to The Gazeteer!


Hat tip to Beijing York in comments.