Saturday, February 25, 2012

Robo or Real Call.....Systematic is NOT Sonamatic

ItTakesAnArmyOfSegrettis
ToWhackEveryoneVille


Recapping....

Sun News pre-empts all the other media one day, and at the same time identifies/elevates the profile a staffer who's name is served up by a Conservative Party 'investigation' into its own alleged election irregularities .

And the next day said staffer, who has become a national scape-goat in less than 24 hrs, is either fired and/or resigns after a whole lot of his easiest to see tracks are first covered, including publicly available stuff on his Twitter feed, stuff I've screen-shot in the past (scroll down the page if you want to see a couple).*

Anyway, that sure would appear to be an excellent example of, as old Tricky Dick himself liked to call it, a 'limited hang-out', eh.**

But....

Here's the real thing....

How could it have all been young Mr. Michael Sona's fault, if all this stuff was being done systematically from a whole bunch of places all at the same time.

And, according to a story from Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor in the Ottawa Citizen, it was.

Being done systematically, I mean.

Here is Maher and McGregor's lede, published late last night, about 36 hours after the limited h-o was set in motion by the fine upstanding folks over at Sun TeeVee:

An analysis of reports of mysterious harassing phone calls during the May 2011 election points to the existence of a systematic voter suppression campaign targeting Liberal voters in some tightly contested ridings.

Unlike the pre-recorded "robocalls" under investigation by Elections Canada, these calls came from live callers, likely working from a call centre.

A Postmedia News-Ottawa Citizen investigation based on interviews with dozens of campaign workers has identified 14 ridings - mostly closely fought electoral districts in southern Ontario - where electors reported receiving fake live calls.

Many received calls in the middle of the night from callers claiming they represented the local Liberal candidate...




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*Bizarrely enough, because of a post I wrote 8 months ago about Mr. Sona's role, together, it would appear, with another young compatriot in causing a conflaguation at an advance poll at the U of Guelph just before the last election, that was, unbeknownst to me, way up on 'teh' Google page (not anymore!...which just demonstrates how well the hangout has worked, at least so far), a national political reporter actually contacted me asking me if I knew how to get in touch with the young (former) staffer...Alas, no....But if someone were to contact, say, oh, I dunno, how about the young compatriot?...
**Kinda/sorta makes you wonder who is going to 'write' the report of that internal ConParty investigation, doesn't it....I mean, I don't think little Johnny Dean would do it now, would he?


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9 comments:

spartikus said...

I'll tell you something - of all the scandals this government has caused this is the cancer that eats at the Prime Ministership.

Too big. Too widespread. Too calculated.

The public will tolerate politicians cheating each other, but they won't tolerate being cheated on directly.

Of note, Mike Sona worked for MP Eve Adams...who was romantically involved with Dimitri Soudas

cherylb said...

I hear they are up to 18 ridings now in three different provinces. That's pretty good for a lowly communications director in a local Ontario campaign.....And of course Harper would be completely oblivious. We know how much he doesn't micro-manage.....

North Van's Grumps said...

We all seen from the Kash Heed case that the duly elected will be exonerated, therefore hold onto his seat, and those who did the illegal campaigning will be rightfully penalized by the Courts.

Hopefully there isn't the Special Prosecutor debacle happening at the Federal Level that happened at the BC Provincial level to muddy the waters.

North Van's Grumps said...

RossK you're on the verge of coining a new word here in Canadian politics: sonamatic

However I went looking for the wrong word: Insomnia

(or sleeplessness) is most often defined by an individual's report of sleeping difficulties.

Therefor how about:

"inSONAnia" the inability to run an election on a level playing field

RossK said...

spart--

We'll see...While I thought that O'Malley and Maher were good, clear and noted the importance of this story/issue on the Ceeb's 'The House' this morning, I was concerned by the willingness of Solomon to fall back into he said/she said mode...

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cheryl--

Ya, 18 is the hardrock baseline number that Maher is using...but he noted that it might be more...Really amazing how much two good reporters with time and room to move can do, eh?...O'Malley said as much and gave them (ie. Maher and Blog Crawl sidebar denizen Glen McGregor kudos to that effect...This is important, and it is the basis of a number offline conversations with folks who know the news business and know that editors and publishers have to work to make this happen (ie. most good reporters really, really, really want to do it)

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NVG--

The kid is just a foot soldier here, a junior Donnie Segretti who went from holding 'Iggy Hearts Torture' signs at ConYouth rallies on the Guelph campus to being an operative very quickly....At this point, I think we have to be careful not to conflate what he has done with the systematic efforts to subvert an entire national election by manipulating the vote in at least 18 critical ridings....As Stephen Maher also said this morning on 'The House' (post comin'!)...."This was not (the work) of one kid with a Robo-Dialer"...

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North Van's Grumps said...

And Barindar Sall, just a another foot soldier who worked with the power of a printing press. Can you just imagine what he would have been like with access to a Robo-Dialer?

Anonymous said...

I can't help wondering why Elections Canada is looking to hire a new Commissioner just at this very moment...

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=abo&dir=com&document=index&lang=e

Saskboy said...

The robocaller voice was female, according to reports. She claimed to be from EC, so couldn't be an innocent patsy, so it's a CONspiracy. (Con's Piracy?)

There will be at least one other going to jail over this when the RCMP start doing their jobs better and uphold the Elections Act. Otherwise we're further up shit creek than I thought we were at the start of last week.

Saskboy said...

More ridings than first thought.