Analysis shows Liberals targeted in tight races

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This article was published 25/02/2012 (5356 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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 tightly contested ridings.

Unlike the pre-recorded so-called robocalls now 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.

Jewish voters in two ridings complained of receiving repeated phone calls at meal time on the Saturday Sabbath. In another riding where the Liberal candidate was of Pakistani heritage, some said the callers mimicked a South Asian accent.

People who received the calls report the callers would phone repeatedly, irritating the recipients, and then speak to them rudely.

Volunteers on local Liberal campaigns, often amateurs, were confused when they received complaints from supporters, and the party did not counter the tactics or record instances in a systematic way.

Whoever was organizing the calls appears to have been working from lists of Liberal supporters, which could have been compiled through voter-identification calls all the parties use.

The Conservatives are particularly adept at tracking voters in every riding using a centralized database called CIMS (Constituent Information Management System), with the name and numbers of identified Conservative supporters and opponents alike. Local campaigns are given access to CIMS.

Some Liberals also suspect someone with access to their lists may have given or sold numbers to the callers.

The deceptive live calls were all made into ridings where Liberals and Conservatives were in tight races, but there were no such calls in some of the ridings the Conservatives were working hard to take from the Liberals.

High-profile Liberal MPs at the top of Conservatives’ target list — such as Ruby Dhalla and Mark Holland — were not targeted.

But from the beginning of the election, campaign staff working for Joe Volpe, in the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence, were hearing reports from Liberal supporters about strange phone calls.

As well as Jewish voters being called on the Sabbath, others complained about early-morning and late-night calls putatively from Volpe’s campaign

— Postmedia News