Friday, November 30, 2012

RoboConch! We're not in Guelph anymore, Robo

In August Elections Canada updated the total number of misleading phone call complaints in the last federal election to 1,394 complaints, alleging specific instances from people in 234  of Canada’s 308 federal ridings

Now we get some concrete evidence. Elections Canada obtained phone records from Shaw and Videotron to verify complaints in 56 separate ridings across Ontario, BC, Alberta, Manitoba, and Quebec. They were released to lawyers in Federal Court yesterday.
1,043 complaints are from voters who say they were directed to a wrong polling station by callers, 625 of them from live or recorded callers “claiming to emanate from Elections Canada.” 
And that's just from two phone service providers.
The new docs from outside Guelph, before and on May 2, detail a widespread vote suppression campaign : mostly robo and live callers pretending to be from EC as they direct people to wrong or non-existent polling stations, pretending to be the NDP phoning people up several times in a night between 2 and 5am, and rude canvassing from fake Liberals. 

Also in August we heard from McMaher that brand new EC Commissioner Yves Côté "declined to hand over robocalls investigation data to Federal Court", citing that it would "encroach upon the public interest".

So how come their big data release yesterday?
Well ...Council of Canadians posted last week's correspondence between EC and Steve Shrybman, lawyer for the plaintiffs in the six contested ridings. [Page 70]
Feel free to add Christopher Walken/Danny DeVito voices as you read my shorter version :
Shrybman : Yo, EC!  Those docs I asked for - the Guelph stuff with Allan Mathews' sworn statements - where are they? The ones the Con respondents say are inadmissible and all just hearsay. 
EC : It is all just hearsay. 
Shrybman : Sorry to hear you feel that way. I guess we'll just have to get Mathews on the stand to swear it isn't hearsay. Yeah, that way we can ask him a few more questions while we're at it.  
EC : Uh ... hey guess what! - we just scored these brand new docs for you today! 
Shrybman : Real nice doing business with you, EC.
.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanks for the working link to the Part 1 of the 3 supporting docs, which doesn't work in the CoC post. Could you also give links for Parts 2 & 3 ?

Alison said...

Part2

Part3

Sent them a note last night about their links and they thought they'd fixed it.
500 Error still intermittent though.

Alison said...

Arghh, they've moved Part 3 again.
Just so you know - it was the Boris Wrzesnewsky judgement.

Anonymous said...

Thanks; in that case, here's Part 3, Opitz v. Wrzesnewskyj:

http://scc.lexum.org/decisia-scc-csc/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12635/index.do

(and Part 1 is at your: [Page 70] above)

RossK said...

"...pretending to be the NDP phoning people up several times in a night between 2 and 5am..."


Hmmmm....

That sure sounds alot like Robo/Real Call Patient Zero, does it not?

And I'm NOT talking about 2011.

.

Kim said...

@Ross K.

Except that patient zero was really in Saanich/Gulf Islands in the previous race between Briony Penn and Gary Lunn.

Near as I can tell...

Alison. It is so great to hear your voice!

West End Bob said...

So glad I got my citizenship so I, too, can be RoboCalled!

It's good to be part of the "in" crowd . . . .

RossK said...

Kim-

Yup - that's where the link takes you.

.

Alison said...

Hey Bob, Kim, Ross - good to hear from y'all.

Speaking of Patient Zero, there was a local blog that wrote about it at great length back when it happened - details on riding association members, turf wars, the whole deal.
Quite personal stuff.
Do you remember who that was?

Anonymous said...

"I was the first robocalls victim" by
Briony Penn

http://fairwhistleblower.ca/content/i-was-first-robocalls-victim

see also

Saanich-Gulf Islands election tactics under microscope

Times Colonist Victoria) October 30, 2008


http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/columnists/story.html?id=f70f8ede-0da9-45ea-a06c-c47817864d55

also, Lawrence Martin:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/the-curious-case-of-saanich-gulf-islands/article2354592/

Owen Gray said...

It's great to see you're back in business, Alison.

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