#28 Steer Me Wrong

The newest annoyance of modern communication: the robocall. You know when you answer the phone and it waits a second then a cheery voice comes on to sell you something. No, it isn't that. The robocall is when all there is at the other end is a recorded voice inflicting sharing information with you.

Apparently used by a number of political parties, form time to time, to get their message out. Also apparently used by one party to send false information to send voters in a close contest to the wrong polling station. That would be robo-voter-suppression, and you would think that a political party would want to encourage participation in the election, not discourage it. Of course, they didn't step up to take “credit” for the move until they had absolutely no choice, preferring that the voters think that it was “another” mix-up from Elections Canada (which actually doesn't do a lot of mix-ups).

For this to work, you would have to have a certain degree of doubt about how well-organized Elections Canada might be, which we could also chalk up to years of inspiring doubt in our democratic institutions. Kind of sad that we have gone there.

When finally caught, the party higher-ups gleefully pinned the blame on a minor staffer, who we are to believe concocted the whole scheme and authorized the payments to the telemarketing company all on his own with no assistance. I suppose it is some kind of twisted testimonial to loyalty that those who are being sacrificed (this one to a criminal sentence) don't turn around and take a few bosses down with them. Not sure I would be particularly proud of that one.

Will we see that again this time around, or has there been sufficient voter suppression in the “Fair” Elections Act? (More on that another time.)

Further reading here. 

Anonymous voice
calls to change my voting place
Seems legit. Wait, what?