03.02.2012 10:33 AM

31,000!

Holy crap!

61 Comments

  1. Kevin T. says:

    But they were being rhetorical when they asked to see the evidence!

  2. nic coivert says:

    People are putting the dots together, EC will take those dots and make lines, those lines will have a quite a tale to tell.

    Here’s another dot, reports of thousands of ‘voters cards’ that were never delivered in Norfolk, which is Diane Finley’s riding and she of course is husband of infamous Doug Finley who has already been convicted of democratic abuses. Hmmm.

  3. Aaron says:

    Could 30 000 of those possibly have been since this story broke? My fear is that people who dislike the Cons, me included, will ruin credibility of case with complaints about PITA calls rather than fraudulent calls.

    • Brian says:

      Based on comments I’ve seen over the last week, I’m already assuming that’s the case. And “Interim” leader Bob Rae hasn’t exactly done a sound job of containing expectations on a scandal that’s still in the early stages of investigation.

    • Tim Sullivan says:

      The wheat will be separated from the chaff.

      How many denials of involvement have we heard from the Conservatives since the story broke in February? Is anyone concerned that we heard nary a peep from them before now.

  4. john says:

    Find it hard to believe that it’s an isolated incident now. The boards are lit up on the G&M website under this article. Must be lots of paid Con bloggers at it today. Waiting for Gord to provide insight…

  5. David_M says:

    the glib and stale?

  6. The Zaphos Institute says:

    “Waiting for Gord to provide insight…”

    I imagine Stephen Taylor’s pretty busy developing the latest talking points for everyone, so it may be a while.

    • Jan says:

      We don’t need Gord, we have Dean del Mastro. After supporters have spent the morning claiming these calls are probably fake, politically motivated, or the result of mass hysteria, he just said on PnP that many of these are from Cons complaining about Lib robocalls. I do hope Harper keeps him on this file, he is the gift that just keeps on giving.

    • Cynical says:

      It’s hard to compose thoughts when you have to move your lips as you think.

    • Derek Pearce says:

      This is why WK must put “Like” or “Dislike” buttons on his site: Zaphos I want to give you a billion likes on your post. The Canadian punditry is truly becoming like the US punditry where even if you know full well your side has done egregious wrong to democracy itself, you defend it. Disgusting.

  7. Shawn J says:

    Where is the context to this story though? How many complaints were there after previous elections? Without all the facts the number 31,000 is just a number.
    The story claims that EC has the resources to go over all the complaints. Does this mean that they normally receive a high number of complaints and have the staff to handle them?

    • Shawn J says:

      OK, looked into it. There were only 500 in the last election so an enormous amount this time. How many of those complaints came in during the last week? Are they of the Election fraud variety (pretending to be an EC representative) or more of the nuisance calls that might be dirty politics but not illegal.

      • Loraine Lamontagne says:

        From my newspaper : The actual report from Elections Canada on the work it did during last spring’s campaign said it fielded 1,003 complaints deemed substantial enough to require an individual response

  8. Mark McLaughlin says:

    The Liberals and NDP have to be a little careful here. I remember a saying about leaving your opponent alone when they are beating themselves.

    It’s hard to believe that these 31,000 are all non-partisan concerned citizens and not (at least partially) a bunch of astro-turfers moving at the direction of the opposition parties. This is going to get worse with or without the Libs and NDP trumping things up, which could just feed into the Conservative’s narrative of a smear campaign.

    On an aside; The opposition don’t seem to be able to get public opinion on their side for any of the Government’s policies, program cuts or other actions so they are always going to the courts, Elections Canada or the RCMP to try to push their agenda. It seems so pathetic to make endruns around the electorate after they get soundly rejected by them.

    • Sean says:

      Its harder to believe that 31,000 people contacted Elections Canada because they are that fanatic supporters of the liberals or NDP.

      More likely they thought nothing of the phone call they got at election time. My uncle was furious with the Liberals in Halifax after receiving rude phone calls from them, he never thought it wasn’t them at the time, why would he? The only contact he had before the harassing phone calls was the conservative candidate came to his door, sat down with him and his wife and after an enjoyable conversation was told that they intended to vote liberal….

      As an aside: Just because you rule doesn’t mean you are above the law. That was changed in 1215 with the Magna Carta.

    • GPAlta says:

      The liberals and ndp were not “soundly rejected” by the electorate. Together they got more than 60% of the vote, even while being harassed and misdirected by the Conservatives. This scandal may well show that it was the Conservatives who did an end run, it was the Conservatives who would have been soundly rejected in a fair contest, and that it will be the Conservatives in jail when the next election comes around.

      The courts, the police, and Elections Canada exist to protect us from exactly this sort of abuse, and I’m glad they’re here to protect us now, since the government says fixing elections is just par for the course and shouldn’t even be discussed in public.

      I’m sure that to make a complaint that can be investigated, you must have to identify yourself, so I’m guessing that these complainants are confident enough in their stories that they don’t expect to face any personal consequences for making false statements. I would tend to take them as seriously as statements made to police.

    • Tired of it All says:

      You are assuming, of course, that the ConBots loyal base aren’t the ones calling EC and inflating the numbers and driving down the credibility of the evidence. Keep in mind they likely concocted an election fraud scam in the first place. Fudging the investigation would be a minor transgression after that.

      Too conspiratorial? Well, I thought the in and out scam was a bad as it could get. Now, sky’s the limit.

      • Attack! says:

        good point, but hopefully they’ll all be given legal depositions and charged with perjury when their stories don’t check out, then

  9. dave says:

    The mean and grubby side of me hopes that the Conservatives continue to have Del Mastro and Poilievre speaking in the House and in public defending their party.

  10. sassy says:

    That should read 1,003, complaints, apparently there were 31,000 contacts seems contacts do not equal complaints.

    from this CBC article

    • Sean says:

      The 1003 complaints were from the post election report. I’m assuming the next 30,000 have arrived after that report was published.

    • Shawn J says:

      “The agency said in its post-election report that it received 1,003 complaints, including complaints about crank phone calls, unsolicited phone calls and automated phone messages.

      There were 1,352 complaints from the 2008 election and 329 from the 2006 election.”

      So there were less complaints this time than in 2008? And there have been 29,997 “complaints” in the last week? How many of these recent calls are of the “I don’t like Harper, let’s pile on variety?”

      • GPAlta says:

        I think that you missed both the headline and the paragraph that says:

        “Elections Canada has received a high volume of complaints in recent days as a result of MPs and political parties calling on the public to send information to the agency. … Elections Canada is reviewing these and will take action as appropriate.”

        These contacts are people trying to follow the advice of the Prime Minister and all other parliamentarians. Why insult them? If they are false, they should face consequences.

        People who may have been disenfranchised by these actions on behalf of the Conservatives are probably somewhat marginalized already and might not know that they can complain or to whom they should complain, so when they receive information about their rights through the media, I’m happy to see them exercising them.

        • Tim Sullivan says:

          It took a long time for the complainant to recognize MP Jack Ramsey who had apparently (or not) been quite the populist Reformer among his constituents. She had not noticed him for a few years.

          Then, when she noticed that law and order Reformer and caucus-mate of the Prime Minister, well, that was a bad day for Jack Ramsey.

          I have this to say about Jack Ramsey: he was not found guilty of fixing elections.

  11. Dan says:

    Harper should never had said the Conservative Party had nothign to do with this (still alledged, and I will wait for the evidence to come out). Left him no wiggle room.

  12. Wayne says:

    “They’ve done it before, they’ll do it again.” That would make a nice add I think.

  13. Sean says:

    don’t forget the “unreported crimes”!

  14. wsam says:

    Could anything, in your opinion, could make opponents of the CPC look good. Would you be satisfied if all opponents of the CPC swore to always and forever vote for the CPC.

    How about if the Liberals and the NDP offered to rename Canada: Alberta, and-Other-Provinces. (AOP)

  15. Tdotlib says:

    Oh the irony of Gord calling out complaints to EC as AstroTurf….

    The mind boggles.

  16. Michael says:

    Do you have any proof of this?

  17. CA says:

    The Robocall Affair at the Movies

    “I feel the need – the need for robocalls!”

    “Tell ‘em to go out there with all they got and robocall one for Steve-o.”

    “Robocalls is Tories!”

    “Forget it, Jake, it’s Harpertown.”

    “Of all the ridings in all the towns in all the world, they robocall mine.”

    “Say ‘hello’ to my little robocall!”

    “Election Fraud, for lack of a better word, is good.”

    “You had me at ‘this is Elections Canada.’”

    “We’ll always have Guelph”

    “Round up the usual 23-year-old backroom young Tories”

    “Play it, Sam. Play ‘This is a call from Elections Canada.’”

    “I’m robocalling here! I’m robocalling here”

    “Poutine. Pierre Poutine.”

    “They call me Mister Poutine!”

    “You robocallin’ me?”

  18. que sera sera says:

    Unholy CRAP!!

  19. Philippe says:

    The funniest part in this whole saga is when Harper recycled the “Liberals did it too!” line and it blew up in his face. Man did I ever get a kick out of that.

    Anyhow, this is thing is clearly going to get big.

  20. fred says:

    Hey, let’s steal the election, cut corporate taxes and eliminate social programs, because that’s what Canadians want.

    • Tim Sullivan says:

      If big new prisons are needed for unreported crime, you’d think the Cons would be overjoyed about actual reported crimes!

      Is the Conservative interest in getting tough on crime while crime is declining anything like the firemen who set fires when business is slow?

  21. Sean says:

    Gord, in which exact riding (singular) did the Tories not cheat, in all four elections since the party was formed?

  22. Shaun says:

    We know, Gord, the CPC are the actual victims of this underhanded scheme by the Liberals, not individuals citizens.

  23. Patrick Deberg says:

    Gord,

    You ask why so many calls in now?
    Because you have woken up the beast.
    The beast is angry.
    The beast is also very very hungry.
    It won’t stop eating until it is satisfied.

    The unfortunate thing is it seems you are on the menu !

  24. Murdoch says:

    A guy I know said he got one and he lives in or around Ward 32!

  25. Michael S says:

    I thought about this issue since it came out, and recall getting at least 2 sometimes 3 calls a day, sometimes more, from the local conservative candidate. Sometimes it would be live calls sometimes “robocalls”. I remember thinking how annoying it was, and going and telling off the candidates brother, since we were taking a course together at the time. He knew i was going to vote liberal, because i told him, so he made the remark that i would get extra calls from his brother’s campaign. I figured he was being a jerk, like most conservatives, and up until now, thought that this was isolated, until this story broke. So if people are calling and complaining now, they might be in the same boat as me, and didn’t realize this was a orchestrated campaign.

  26. Steve K says:

    Think Attiwapiskat: Put the Tories under Third Party Management!

  27. Philip says:

    There is nothing like Conservative concern trolls. Gee, thanks for taking the time out from your implosion to drop on by and lay some wisdom on us. Have a great day.

  28. Shawn J says:

    I think this may be where some of the 30,000 “contacts” came from. Who has been pushing this website? Seems to be a form letter for partisan supporters to ask for an inquiry. Far from an actual complaint of specific wrongdoing. Each is sent to elections Canada so would be registered as a contact.
    http://www.leadnow.ca/robocall-fraud

    • Philip says:

      Golly Shawn, maybe we shouldn’t bother to look into this whole mess at all? After all, what’s good enough for Haiti or Myanmar, is certainly good enough for Canada. Your Conservative Party spent a lot of time and money to drag Canadian democracy through the shit, I think that deserves a second look.

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