RoboCalls scandal

[Alison]

Watergate wasn't about a hotel either but I don't think that confused anyone.
A lot of people won't care about the details now, nor did they then.
It's the meme that counts.

[Antonia]

Here's my story, with nods to Alison and deBeauxOs.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1140248--robo-calls-scandal-shows-how-new-technologies-are-changing-politics

And Linda Diebel did a great one!

Fourteen Conservative MPs signed on with a well-connected Republican company during last year’s election campaign, contrary to the party’s claims, the Star has learned.
On its website, Front Porch Strategies, a “voter contact and constituency outreach” firm based in Columbus, Ohio, boasts: “In May’s federal elections, Front Porch Strategies won all 14 of their races.”
Among their clients was Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro who, on Thursday, led the charge in the Commons over the voter dirty tricks scandal, accusing Liberals and notably Eglinton—Lawrence MP Joe Volpe of paying over $25,000 to a calling company with offices in North Dakota.
Added Prime Minister Stephen Harper: “We’ve done some checking. We’ve only found that, in fact, it was the Liberal party that did source its phone calls from the United States.”

[Toedancer]

I like how Front Porch is so upfront about its biases. The Ohio based company was used by Del Mastro's riding, all the calls were programmed to look like they were coming from his local campaign headquarters. That's a deceitful dirty trick ferrsure, but hardly illegal.


http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/02/pol-weston-election-calls.html


“Our passion is helping Republican candidates, elected officials, and conservative causes win by personally connecting them with voters and constituents,” the company says on its website.
The website features a gushing report on Harper and the Conservatives winning last year’s election, calling the prime minister “the most powerful conservative leader in the Americas.”
On its role for the Harper Conservatives during last year’s federal election, the firm boasts: “Front Porch Strategies won all 14 of their races.” 
Pat Martin (the NDP's equivalent of John Baird) is not taking the lawsuit from Rack9 too srsly, his tweets say already a bunch of MP's are putting the money to help out. Meantime a lot of new job openings at Elections Canada. I find the whole thing quite distasteful, everyone whipping up into a frenzy, and I truly hope that's not an indication of how 'they' would run the country. I actually got a robocall asking me to attend a con town hall, I hung up thinking WOT, This is Steeltown, the Con gob sold out Hamilton steelworkers just to save face for approving a foreign takeover!!

[Toedancer]

Robocall Protests

Tony Clement, Huntsville http://www.cottagecountrynow.ca/news/article/1307536--protesters-at-mp-clement-s-office-decry-robo-calls-and-oas-changes


Vancouver - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/03/03/bc-robocall-rally.html


The Avaaz Petition, they wanted 50,000 sigs and have almost reached it.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/election_fraud/?cl=1636693184&v=12998

[Boom Boom]

 Elizabeth May on Facebook: Rally against election fraud at noon on Monday March 5th on Parliament Hill.
 
 
ETA: If these protests pick up steam right across the country, they could be hugely embarrassing for the Conservatives. Of course, they could also drop off, fail to make an impact, or the Cons might just stage counter-demos. Remains to be seen if the population has the interest to keep this going, or not.

[Holly Stick]

Stephen Lautens tweeted a link to a photo of the "political superweapon"


https://twitter.com/#!/stephenlautens/status/176465189707857921


http://i.imgur.com/639Ot.jpg


I don't know where he got it.

[pogge]

I don't know where he got it.

It looks like it's from a Facebook page.

[Holly Stick]

Here's his linkedinpage:

... Input and result data is completely customizable meaning we can integrate with your in-house contact management system right from the start...

http://ca.linkedin.com/in/mattmeier

OK that facebook page has been around for a few days: https://twitter.com/#!/ehdot/statuses/175098794621415426

and the NDP has part of it at least:

http://www.ndp.ca/press/reality-check-racknine-s-political-superweapon

[Toedancer]

If the supersleuth x rcmp Matthews finds the credit card that purchased the burn phone, then I would suggest (my guess is all) Andrew Prescott should lawyer up. Altho as bumbling as Pierre Poutine was, he did buy a burner which I think means he also used a pre-paid credit card, in which case Matthews won't find out. If PP did then he'll try and ride it out, cuz he's that dishonest.

[Boom Boom]

Kudos to Nycol Turmel for asking today in Question Period about a big cheque that went from the Government of Canada to Rack Nine. Harper gave today's scripted robo answer. This will definitely wear on the Cons the longer it goes on.

[Holly Stick]

Yep, there are too many stories on it to keep up with. Here's the latest; people being harassed and falsely told they had promised to donate to the Conservative Party, including an 89-year-old man:

http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/344333/parti-conservateur-des-appels-harcelants-pour-obtenir-des-dons


Woohoo! Bowser & Blue song "Pierre Poutine"; funny pix too!:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXKcDkULIEE   

[Alison]

Was a 'political superweapon' part of Robogate?

Tracey Kent vs the man with the red beard/ why EC will never get to the bottom of Robogate

and

CBC vid : Over 2700 last minute unregistered blank ballot registrations with bogus address or no voter address at all in Joe Oliver's riding

[greenvie]

Indeed, so many stories on robo-calls & voter suppression. Here's one about Campaign Research Inc. http://www.vancouverobserver.com/politics/2012/03/07/robo-call-scandal-origins-inside-conservatives%E2%80%99-voter-suppression-school

Campaign Research does voter identification and market research for the Conservative Party of Canada. The agency made news in December when they placed misleading phone calls to Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s constituents  in an apparent attempt to identify likely Conservative and non-Conservative voters in that riding. The calls falsely claimed that   he would resign his seat and then asked the constituents who they would  support in the by-election that would follow. When Colter then raised concerns about the ethics of the misleading phone calls in the House of Commons, Conservative MPs dismissed his concerns by claiming that the misleading phone calls were a protected form of free speech.

John Fryer was invited to attend.

In 2010, John Fryer, a member of the Order of Canada and an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, attended a campaign school training offered by the Conservative-aligned Manning Centre for Democracy. Last week, as news of the robo-call scandal spread across Canada, he was driven to pen a letter to the editor of major Canadian newspapers about the nature of this training...

...The school was organized by   Fraser McDonald of the Manning Centre in addition to Richard Ciano and   Nick Kouvalis. Both are founding members of Campaign Research, established in 2003...“We’re in the business of getting Conservatives elected and ending Liberal careers. We’re good at it,” Kouvalis told Maclean's magazine, in response to complaints last year about his company's phone calls in the Mount Royal riding. Kouvalis developed the first virtual “at home” call centre in 2006, and his business was merged with Campaign Research Inc. in 2008. He was Toronto mayor Rob Ford’s Deputy Campaign manager and chief of staff. His wife, Amber-Joy, runs the virtual call centre that Campaign Research used to   call voters for Conservatives during the federal election...


...A brief scan of campaign spending during the 2011 election from Elections Canada shows that Dean Del Mastro, MP for Peterborough paid Campaign Research $22,120.60, while Peter Braid, the MP for Kitchener-Waterloo, paid $19,120.00. Kellie Leitch from Simcoe-Grey paid a total of $21,315.19. Vancouver Quadra candidate Deborah Meredith paid $13,582.85, and Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca candidate Troy DeSouza paid Campaign Research a total $8,144. The list goes on.

Elections Canada’s robo-call election fraud investigation has already spread to include RackNine Inc. and Responsive Marketing Group. It does not yet include Campaign Research.

Reflecting upon his experience at the training. Fryer notes: “I’ve been around politics a long time, and this is just a different place.”

Where's the barf emoticon?

[lagatta]

Another cartoon from Garnotte (Le Devoir).

http://www.ledevoir.com/images_galerie/1_88794/le-ministre-baird-rencontre-aung-san-suu-kyi.jpg

Baird delivering honorary Canadian citizenship to Aung San Suu Kyi, as she expresses concern about irregularities in the upcoming Burmese elections...

[Alison]

Star :

[/size]Automated phone calls that directed people to the wrong polling stations in the last federal election overwhelmingly targeted older voters, the Toronto Star has learned..“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..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."