#Robocalls: Take action

It's become increasingly clear that actions were taken to suppress the votes of Canadians, in Guelph and allegedly in other ridings in the 2011 Federal Election. Don't let some media outlets spin this as a story about "crank calls" or "bad politics". This was an illegal act that violated our charter rights. The Guelph Green Party has just distributed an email to it's supporters urging them to contact your local media and elected officials to demand that the incident be treated with the severity it deserves. The person/people/organization responsible for attempting to mislead Guelph voters must be found and held accountable.

Write a letter or email to the following media outlets:

The Guelph Mercury: editor@guelphmercury.com.
Toronto Star: lettertoed@thestar.ca
CBC (editorial): yournews@cbc.ca
Toronto Sun: http://www.torontosun.com/letter-to-editor
National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/contact/letters/index.html?name=Letters&subject=Letter+to+the+editor
Globe and Mail:  letters@globeandmail.ca

Update:  If you'd like to tell the Guelph MP Frank Valeriote what you think, contact him at: Frank.valeriote@parl.gc.ca

For a template letter/email to the editor, you can use this if you would like.

Another impact of the robo calls

We're at the point where it's been proven that the Conservative campaign for Marty Burke knowingly worked to suppress voter turnout (see: bit.ly/wvr5kb for the latest).

So here was a question I was discussing over the weekend: Is it possible that these calls may have prevented the Green campaign for John Lawson from getting 10% of the vote? This is a significant number, as the Lawson campaign would receive a rebate of around $27,000. Any amount less than 10% of the vote and the campaign does not receive that rebate.

As this investigation continues, it will be interesting to learn who the Burke campaign was targeting. If these calls went to people that the Conservative campaign identified as Liberal and Green supporters, then I wonder if it is possible to prove that the Green's would have earned their campaign rebate?

For a look at the numbers, visit Election Canada here: http://elections.ca/scripts/ovr2011/default.html. Essentially, the Green campaign would have needed 2,191 more votes to reach 10% of the total turnout in the May 2011 election.

CTV reporting on the robocalls

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120223/robocalls-tories-politics-elections-120223/

There's a comprehensive series of stories covering the Conservative robo-call voter suppression into 18 ridings in Canada. PM Harper states that there may have been "rogue" elements of his party that organized this act of disenfranchising Canadian voters.  From this list of names attached to the company that made the phone calls, here are potentially some campaigns that contain those "rogue" elements (names listed from invoices to Rack9, available on my previous blog post):

Campaign to elect Stephen Harper - Calgary Southwest 

Campaign to elect Rona Ambrose - Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women
Campaign to elect Jason Kenney - Calgary Southeast - Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
Campaign to elect Ryan Hastman - Edmonton Strathcona
Campaign to elect Leon Benoit - Vegreville—Wainwright
Campaign to elect Laurie Hawn - Edmonton Centre
Campaign to elect Lee Richardson -  North Battleford
Campaign to elect Devinder Shory - Calgary Northeast