Robo And Real Calls.....The Big Question Now....

ThisIsNotYourFather'sNixon

DirtierTricksVille

"Who Knew What, When?"

Stephen Maher, PostMediaNews

On 'The House" Feb 25, 2012

Now.

I don't know for sure.

But I do know that at least a couple of our readers knew something way back in April of 2011.

How do I know that for sure?

Because, after I wrote a series of posts about Mr. Michael Sona's involvement, together with a very fine online publication called the 'Landmark Report', in a conflaguration that took place at an advance student poll in Guelph Ontario, the following exchange took place in the comment threads:

Anonymous said...Forget about Sona. Check this out. Elections Canada is investigating harassing midnight or early am calls to people in close ridings asking them to vote Liberal. Vote supression strategy directly copied from the states. Seems like the RepubliCON strategists like Lutz imported by cons from the states are pulling every rovian trick in the book in order to ensure a Harper majority.

6:56 PM, April 19, 2011

G West said...CBC is now reporting that Elections Canada has ruled they are good votes and a valid process...Haven't heard anything further from Sona.

1:46 PM, April 20, 2011

Anonymous said...@Anon3, Yeah the calls are being investigated by EC at the request of the Liberals most of them have been traced to North Dakota...seems like the Republicans have their tea partiers working overtime campaining for the cons.

6:55 PM, April 20, 2011

RossK said...Thanks All.Unfortunately, I just don't see the hard evidence re: the recent calls, robo or otherwise, and where they are actually coming from.It is interesting to note, however, that we out here in Lotusland had some most peculiar phone calling going down late in the 2008 election cycle that targetted a particular left-sided group of voters in the riding of, surprise!, of Mr. Gary Lunn.

7:16 PM, April 20, 2011

Anonymous said...They have been traced to some numbers in North Dakota. This fact has been widely reported. One of the first ridings to recieve these calls was that of Liberal MP Joe Volpe(high percentage of wealthy upper middle class voters and a big con target cuz of the Jewish vote).

10:49 AM, April 22, 2011

RossK said...Thanks Anon.Will follow.

_____________________

Now, a couple of things.

First, as Kady O'Malley also said this morning on 'The House', these stories were out there at the time, but it took Maher and his compatriot from the OCitizen (and BlogCrawl denizen) Glen McGregor to sit down, look at all the stories, and then a whole lot more digging over a period of weeks to see the bigger picture of the systematic efforts to affect the vote in, by Maher's count at the moment, at least 18 ridings.

Second, I did do a little digging at the time, but ran up against this North Dakota area code problem which, apparently, is where phone scammers of all kinds (and not just political) go to be completely anonymous.

Which, I think, begs another question that is not quite, but almost, buried in Mr. Maher's question at the top of the post....

Did somebody, right from the start, know this would come out eventually and, given that, did they, perhaps, make sure they had a pre-packaged, pre-planned limited hang-out all set and ready to whip out when needed?

****

Again.

I, like many others, including, I'm pretty sure, Ms. Malley ("how come his [Mr. Sona's] name was floated by all the usual suspects and conservative sources within five minutes after the story broke?") believe that Mr. Sona is being scapegoated here because, as Mr. Maher also said on the CBC this morning:

"This was not one kid with a robo-dialer"

OK?

_______

More on that London Ontario party for Ann Coulter in March of 2010 and the photos that were taken there to come....

.