How Many Links to a Smoking Gun?

Maurice Vellacott had a little chat with The Hill Times and it wasn't about abortion.

But when Stevie Peevie gets a load of this, I think he'll open the Abortion Debate all by himself to distract the brainless big-mouth.

Further to Blame Game Move 5 (blame Elections Canada), Vellacott explains that EC sends voter lists to all parties, once early on in the campaign, and again three days before the election. Note: these lists do NOT contain the all-important telephone numbers.

Then what happens, Maurice?

Mr. Vellacott disclosed the Conservative Party’s central campaign matches the telephone numbers of identified voters, from a range of sources including electoral district information, with the Elections Canada voter lists.

“I don’t know how it works with everybody, but for the most part, because it’s such a massive job in such a short period of time, I would suspect that with most parties, I can’t speak for others, but I suspect it comes from the national party office, you know attempting to do that,” Mr. Vellacott said

“They’ve got all these 308 ridings across the country, but they do the match up for us. We don’t do it ourselves, in terms of the addition [of phone numbers]. I don’t know how it works for others, the new dump of stuff as it kind of progresses through the campaign and then trying to marry those numbers, that’s all done by our national office, at least within the Conservative Party.”

Liberals told The Hill Times on Tuesday their party does not maintain central control over campaign voting lists and voter identification numbers, and a senior NDP official, Brad Lavigne, recently told CBC’s The House that NDP electoral districts maintain their own voter lists.

Mr. Vellacott said he believes the Conservative Party manages the lists and matches voter identification telephone numbers centrally because it has the capacity and the expertise that the job requires.

Given Vellacott's intellectual capacity, perhaps this is just a kindness on CPC's part and done only for him.

We await further clarfication.

From the same article, an interesting tidbit:

Elections Canada confirmed to The Hill Times on Tuesday that for the first time in a federal election a representative of one of the recognized parties, the Conservative Party, had before the election requested that the initial voter list given to the parties at the beginning of the campaign include the location of polling sites. In response, Elections Canada provided the information to the Conservative Party and the other recognized parties.

Chief Electoral Marc Mayrand cautioned about the unusual request in a comprehensive report to Parliament last August.

Hence the warning from EC to parties NOT to give out polling station information.

“Because a polling site can be replaced by another at the last minute, and to ensure that electors always have access to the most accurate information regarding their location, Elections Canada indicated to political parties that the list supplied should only be used for internal purposes and that parties should not direct electors to polling sites,” the report said.

“Political parties were invited to refer electors to the Elections Canada website, their local Elections Canada office or their voter information card for locations, to prevent electors from being directed to incorrect polling sites. Some political parties did not comply with this request.”

It was the Contempt Party of Canada that requested the polling station locations, eh? For the first time, eh?

So, to recap. At least one Con says the telephone numbers were added by the national campaign and that the lists were centrally controlled. Said telephone numbers were used to misinform voters about the location of their polling stations -- locations requested by the Contempters.

Not much, I agree. But the links are there. We've gotta keep at it.