ELECTION FRAUD IN CANADA-ROBOCALL AFFAIR

I'M SURE I RECIEVED A PHONE CALL TO AT SOME TIME-I THINK IT WAS FROM THE LIBERALS BUT I CAN'T BE SURE.THE GOVERNMENT WOULD HAVE KNOWN I VOTED CONSERVATIVE BECAUSE THATS ALL I HAVE BEEN VOTING FOR YEARS NOW.

NDP MP facing lawsuit from robocall company By Daniel Proussalidis ,Parliamentary Bureau| Updated: Sunday, March 04, 2012 12:10 PM EST

OTTAWA - New Democrat MP Pat Martin, known for his colourful and sometimes profanity-laced tirades against the Conservatives, is brushing off a defamation lawsuit against him and his party.The charge is being laid by RackNine Inc., an Edmonton-based company that made automated calls for the Tories in last May's election. It's seeking $5 million in damages because of statements Martin made about the company and its CEO Matthew Meier.In a statement to QMI Agency, Martin blew off the charge.They are trying to silence me more than address a legitimate grievance, said Martin. I have a public responsibility to defend the integrity of our democracy and our electoral system and I don't apologize for doing so.RackNine says Martin went well beyond defending democracy and the electoral system.The MP called the company rascals in a news conference and accused it of making hundreds of thousands of phoney phone calls that were part of a massive conspiracy to defraud the electoral system.RackNine said it also objects to Martin comparing the company to Groupaction, the advertising firm caught up in the Liberal sponsorship scandal.The controversy over automated phone calls during last year's federal election came to light in February after a resident in Guelph, Ont., said he'd received several robocalls informing him that his voting station had changed.It's believed those calls directed non-Conservative voters to the wrong polling stations.RackNine says it is co-operating with an Elections Canada investigation into those calls.

Meantime, Elections Canada says it has been flooded with more than 31,000 complaints after politicians and various media outlets urged voters to report any questionable calls they may have fielded.Elections Canada has not clarified how many of those complaints are frivolous or fake, deal with merely annoying calls, or seem to be actual attempts to steer voters to wrong polling stations.
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/03/ndp-mp-facing-lawsuit-from-robocall-company

The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION PayPal Canada says it is co-operating with Elections Canada robocall probe By: The Canadian Press Posted: 03/6/2012 1:19 PM | | Last Modified: 03/6/2012 2:05 PM

TORONTO - A company that provides an online payment service has gotten tangled in a widening probe into alleged dirty tricks used in last year's federal election campaign.PayPal Canada confirmed Tuesday it had received a court order from Elections Canada relating to some of its records but refused to elaborate.PayPal is working to support this investigation, but also adheres to a strict privacy policy to protect the confidential information of our users,spokeswoman Martha Cass said in a statement.However, Elections Canada said it didn't know anything about the court order. Nor could it confirm any connection with the ongoing robocall probe.At this point, I don't have that — I can't get that information or confirm it for you, said Diane Benson, a spokeswoman for the federal agency.Investigators with Elections Canada have been looking into complaints of misleading calls made to voters in Guelph, Ont., during the 2011 federal election.Since the scandal broke, Canadians in dozens of ridings have reported receiving phoney or harassing calls by people purportedly representing political parties.Elections Canada is now reviewing more than 31,000 reports of such automated calls.

Robo-calls: Elections Canada probing fraudulent calls in Ontario riding of Nipissing-Temiskaming Published On Tue Mar 06 2012

OTTAWA—Federal elections investigators are probing robo-calls in another riding — Nipissing-Temiskaming in northern Ontario — that could have tipped one of the tightest races in the country in favour of the Conservative party, the Star has learned.In the week before Election Day, an automated voice message was received by a North Bay environmental activist that raised her suspicions.I got a call that said it was Elections Canada calling to say that due to higher than anticipated voter turnout that my polling place was changed, said Peggy Walsh Craig.In an interview with the Star, the woman said she had received two calls during the spring 2011 campaign, the first a few weeks before voting day on May 2. It asked if she intended to vote for the Conservative party. She did not. The second came in the week prior to the election.Walsh Craig recalled wondering how did Elections Canada get her phone number, and how would it know voting turnout was high in the days before the election. She did not know at the time that the telephone call she described as really strange would be replicated in households across the country.Elections Canada — which says it does not have voter telephone numbers and does not call individual voters — said it has been flooded with complaints about suspicious calls telling voters their polling booth had been changed.Over the weekend, investigators with the Commissioner of Canada Elections contacted Walsh Craig to review her complaint.Her account of the fraudulent call to Ottawa-based investigator Tim Charbonneau is particularly important in a riding where the incumbent Liberal, Anthony Rota, lost by just 18 votes to Jay Aspin, the Conservative candidate.

Charbonneau didn’t reveal the extent of the probe, but said he was working straight through the weekend to deal with what the federal election agency has said were 31,000 complaints by Canadians who believe they were subject to dirty tricks in the last campaign.They said there is a chance they may be back in touch with me, Walsh Craig said. He said he thought that my account sounded credible, for whatever that’s worth.The calls she describes having received are similar to those investigators have already uncovered in the ridings of Guelph and Windsor–Tecumseh that have been traced back to RackNine Inc., an Edmonton-based automated telephone service.RackNine Inc. received thousands of dollars from campaigning Tories in 2011. The company is not reported to have worked on Aspin’s campaign in Nipissing-Temiskaming. RackNine has also denied any wrongdoing and says it is cooperating with Elections Canada’s investigators.Aspin’s official report of election expenses only notes payments of $5,221.44 to Calgary-based Alberta Blue Strategies.That firm is one of about a half-dozen live and automated calling services that Conservative candidates employed in the last campaign.Alberta Blue Strategies describes itself as offering live telephone services and political solutions including fundraising, voter identification, polling and robo-calling.We are Conservatives who want to see Conservatives win,the company notes on its website.The governing Conservatives are shrugging off questions in the House of Commons.

On Monday, Harper was absent but his parliamentary secretary, MP Dean Del Mastro, said the Liberals were the source of their own woes, and just hadn’t accepted the results of the last election.The Liberals made a lot of calls in the last election and they are the source of all these complaints, Del Mastro said. He said it was up to the Liberals to release their phone call records, not the Conservatives.Of all the wacko things that Mr. Del Mastro has said in the past 10 days, that has got to be the wackiest, said Liberal interim leader Bob Rae.Jean-Pierre Kingsley, former chief electoral officer of Canada, told the Star that if the Liberal party misdirected its own voters or made calls that harassed and annoyed their own supporters to the point they didn’t vote, That’s called stupidity. Stupidity is not against the law. But if another party’s callers misrepresented themselves as Liberals with the goal of dissuading others from voting Liberal, that’s against the law,he said.With files from Petti Fong