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Canadian Government accused of voting fraud


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According to the Conservatives, first it was some random guy in Guelph. Then, they didn't know who was responsible.

Then, they said it was Elections Canada who must have messed up and given out the wrong information.

Then, they decided to blame the Liberal party. They demanded the Liberals release all their call records because they were sure the records would prove the Liberals phoned up Liberal supporters, identified themselves as the Liberal party, harassed them and then directed them to the wrong polling station.

So the Liberals are releasing as much of their records as they can.

Oh, and then the Conservatives refused to release their own call records because it was obvious they didn't do anything wrong.

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Tories demand Liberals release call records – but refuse to follow suit

GLORIA GALLOWAY

OTTAWA— Globe and Mail Update

Posted on Monday, March 5, 2012 5:11PM EST

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives say the Liberals must release records of calls made on their behalf during the last election – but the Tories also say there is no reason for them to release their own documentation.

Dean Del Mastro, the parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, stood repeatedly in House of Commons Monday to answer questions from opposition MPs who accuse the Conservatives of making calls to suppress votes for other parties. Over and over again, Mr. Del Mastro blamed the Liberals for the calls.

“The Leader of the Liberal Party knows full well, every household that they called, every originating phone number they called them from, and, in fact, when those calls were made,” he said in response to a question from Bob Rae. “When will he make those phone records public? Because I believe when those phone records are made public, the Liberal Party will have fingered itself for each and every one of these calls that they allege had taken place.”

But when asked later by reporters if the Conservatives were prepared to release their own records, Mr. Del Mastro said: “No, because obviously our party is not behind the calls. We know that. We believe the Liberal Party has in fact made these allegations and they’ve made these allegations knowing full well that they’ve paid these companies millions of dollars to makes calls to hundreds of thousands of households across the country.”

Elections Canada says it has been contacted by 31,000 Canadians in relation to calls. Some of them directed people to the wrong polling station. And some Liberal candidates say their supporters were harassed over the telephone by people wrongly claiming to represent the Liberal Party.

A Conservative staffer who worked on his party’s campaign in the Ontario riding of Guelph resigned after the elections agency said is was investigating the calls that misdirected voters. And the Liberals say it doesn’t make sense that they would call voters, identify themselves and Liberals, and proceed to harass them.

Mr. Rae said after Question Period that the Liberals are trying to get permission from the companies they have hired to do their calling to release the records and are hoping to do so in the near future.

As to the statement the Conservatives will not release their own records because they are not the ones making the allegations, Mr. Rae said: “Of all the wacko things that Mr. Del Mastro has said in the past 10 days, that has to be the wackiest.”

To suggest the Conservatives don’t have to answer because they are not concerned about this problem demonstrates “they have lost completely their moral compass,” the Interim Liberal Leader said. “I mean, of course they have to release the documents. Everybody does.”

Pat Martin, the Winnipeg MP who has been the NDP’s main interrogator on the calls, said Mr. Del Mastro’s excuse for not releasing the phone records was a “ridiculous, spurious” argument.

“If they have nothing to hide as they keep saying,” Mr. Martin said, “why are they denying and obstructing any idea of a public inquiry? They are not behaving like people with nothing to hide. They are behaving like people who have everything to hide.”

After Mr. Del Mastro demanded several times during Question Period that the Liberals release their phone records, NDP MP Charlie Angus accused the Conservatives of bullying the third party in the House of Commons.

“Last week, the Minister of National Defence said it was a kid from Guelph [who was behind the calls], case closed. Now the Conservatives are saying they do not know what is going on in Guelph. Now we are hearing that the Conservative Party is trying to blame Elections Canada because obviously blaming the little Liberal Party is not following through either,” Mr. Angus said. “When will the government stop playing the blame game and come clean with the electoral fraud that happened under its watch and its party.”

Mr. Del Mastro clarified later in the day that the Conservatives will give Elections Canada any documents the agency requests.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/tories-demand-liberals-release-call-records-but-refuse-to-follow-suit/article2359412/

Blaming the Liberals is obviously not working. Yet Harper Gov continues to make a mockery of Canada's democratic process.

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This is your leadership Canada. When your election is tampered with, your leaders will make jokes instead of standing accountable. By Any Means Necessary, that is the conservative motto here, just as it has been in the US. How's the view from the backseat of your own democracy?

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Unfortunately, his position allows his to spout off this type of unsubstantiated crap without suffering the repercussions of doing so; meantime, public perception of the CPC is tarnished thanks to these cheap tactics employed by Rae et al.

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there is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odiuos , makes you so sick at heart ,that you can"t take part , you can"t even passively take part , and you have got to put your bodies upon the gears , upon the wheels , upon the levers , upon all the apparatus and you have got to make it stop ,and you have got to indicate to the people who run it , to the people who own it, that unless you are free the machine will be prevented from working at all .

Mario Savio .

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Have you read the latest?

MPs vote to give Elections Canada more power.

A motion calling on the government to boost Elections Canada's investigative power has passed in a unanimous vote by members of Parliament tonight.

Now it is up to the government to introduce legislation to implement the measures contained in the motion.

The move comes as the 2011 election sits at the centre of controversy on Parliament Hill.

Elections Canada is investigating allegations of fraudulent calls that were made to voters in Guelph, Ont. It is also looking into numerous reports of misleading automated messages, known as robocalls, and misleading live calls that were received by voters in ridings across the country.

The non-binding motion to give Elections Canada more power was proposed by the NDP last week, and was later tweaked so its measures would apply to both past and future federal elections.

The motion and the amendment was supported across the board, passing 283-0— a result greeted in Parliament with applause.

Motion requests 3 changes to act

The motion, by NDP MP David Christopherson, asks the government to make three changes to the Elections Canada Act in the next six months:

  • Give Elections Canada stronger investigative powers, including the ability to force political parties to provide supporting documents for their expenses.

  • Require all telecommunication companies that provide voter contact services during a general election to register with Elections Canada.

  • Make telecommunication companies identify and verify the identity of election clients.

Christopherson said last week there will be "hell to pay" if the government doesn't move quickly to bring in legislation to back the motion.

He said he also expects Canadians will pressure the government to act to strengthen Elections Canada powers.

Option to address spending won't affect taxpayer

Last week, the opposition parties accused the government of denying a request from Elections Canada for the power to demand receipts for political parties' election spending.

In his report on the 2008 federal election, Canada's chief electoral officer asked MPs to give him the power to request supporting documents from political parties for their expenses. Individual candidates are already required to provide their receipts, as are leadership contestants, Marc Mayrand told the procedure and House affairs committee.

But opposition MPs say the Conservatives on the committee looking at the report overruled them last week, refusing to support Mayrand’s recommendation.

Tom Lukiwski, the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, said Mayrand suggested two options to deal with party spending, and the committee went with the option that cost the parties rather than taxpayers.

The committee recommended the parties have their books audited to ensure they complied with the law.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/12/pol-ndp-motion-elections-canada.html?cmp=rss

Non binding? What the hell is that supposed to mean? This is about the Con's election corruption, not whether your underwear fits or not. Whats the point of doing anything if it's "non-binding"?

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Update!

Misleading calls followed ID as non-Tories, voters say.

none

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Terry MilewskiPolitics

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How parties 'identify' voters, and why it matters Elections watchdog has complaints from 700 people Liberal election calls records given to agency

An investigation by CBC News has turned up voters all over Canada who say the reason they got robocalls sending them to fictitious polling stations was that they'd revealed they would not vote Conservative.

Although the Conservative Party has denied any involvement in the calls, these new details suggest that the misleading calls relied on data gathered by, and carefully guarded by, the Conservative Party.

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.

Election day calls

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.

From the outset, the Conservative Party leadership has insisted it had no involvement in these calls.

"The Conservative party can say absolutely, definitively, it has no role in any of this," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper. His parliamentary secretary, Dean Del Mastro, calls claims to the contrary "baseless smears."

However, opposition leaders say the scheme could never have gone forward without callers having access to the Conservatives' proprietary database on voter intentions. Known as "CIMS," the database assigns a "smiley" face to supporters, and a "sad" face to non-Conservatives. Liberal and NDP politicians say it would make no sense to call randomly, since many of the voters misled would be Conservatives.

"Who had access to the database? Who wrote the scripts?" asked the NDP's Charlie Angus in question period Thursday. He did not receive an answer.

Lori Bruce of Fredericton thinks she has a good idea. She said the Conservatives knew she was not a supporter, and called her more than once — even identifying themselves while misdirecting her to the wrong polling station.mi-election-signs-00501738.jpgVoters from ridings across the country who spoke to CBC News describe receiving misleading automated calls with incorrect polling station changes after receiving Conservative Party calls. (Canadian Press)

Bruce said she received a call stating that it was "on behalf of Stephen Harper and Keith Ashfield for the Conservative party."

"At that point, he told me that my voting location had changed. I, at that point, said no, it's at the same location it always is."

Bruce then Googled the caller's number and found out it was the Conservative campaign office. Still, she wanted to be sure.

"I called the number back," she says, "and I just got an answering machine message, saying thank you for calling the Conservative Party."

Peggy Walsh Craig of North Bay, Ont., told a similar story — but received two separate calls.

"The first one was a few weeks before the election and it simply asked me one question and that was, was I going to vote for the Conservative Party — and I indicated no."

Only later did she get an anonymous second call, she said.

'Polling stations have changed'

"That was, it was Elections Canada calling and that they — due to higher than anticipated voter turnout, the polling station had been changed."

Once again, it hadn't changed at all. The same thing happened to Astrid Dimond of Mission, B.C.

Dimond said a caller told her that, "We're just phoning to let you know that the polling stations have changed."

Dimond knew better.

"And I said, no they haven't, and I hung up on her."

Dimond added that she tracked the call back to its source. The misleading call "came from the same number that all the other calls had come from, which I found out was the Conservative Party."

CBC News came up with many voters with similar complaints, including Saj Aziz in the riding of Mississauga-Streetsville, Carmen Leveille in Victoria, Gordon Webb in Guelph, May Beland in Willowdale and Susan Lapell in the Toronto riding of St. Paul's.

Aziz said a "research company" tried to find out who he was voting for as part of an "independent poll." When he declined to commit to the Conservatives, he was told that "a supervisor" would call him back. Then, he got a call from the Conservative party, trying to win him over. When that didn't work, he finally got a call saying that his polling station had moved. However, he'd already voted in the advance poll, at the right place.

In Guelph — where the robo-call scandal began — Gordon Webb says he made it clear to the Conservatives that he would not vote for them. He, too, got a misdirection call telling him to go to a phoney polling station. At least a hundred people showed up there and some of them angrily gave up on voting, blaming Elections Canada.

As for the next step, all of these voters say they want Elections Canada to get to the bottom of it.

"There definitely should be punishment," said Lori Bruce of Fredericton. "They should be punished to the fullest extent of the law."

In North Bay, where the Liberals lost by just 18 votes, Peggy Walsh Craig said, "I care a lot about democracy and so I'm appalled that this is happening."

"It raises enough questions that it makes me wonder about the results here."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2012/03/15/pol-investigation-.html

There is sure is a lot more going than meets the eye.

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