Robocalls

A growing scandal in Canada is the emerging magnitude of dirty tricks alleged to have taken place in the 2011 federal election. The Conservative Party won a majority of seats in the first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all parliamentary system but with not much more than 40% of the vote. All these many months later the opposition parties are comparing notes and now say that more than 40 ridings have been targeted by so called robocalls (new expression for the ages) which means cold calls to potential voters with the intent to mislead. Clearly this would have been a blatant attempt to undermine the fair election process. Political operatives or companies for hire are said to have phoned voters on the voting lists of the opposition NDP, Liberals and maybe even the Greens, telling voters for example that their polling booth location had been changed when in fact this was pure invention. Bring in the Robo Cops! If the Conservatives are proven to be behind these un-Canadian tactics, the Big Blue Machine might have to face new by-elections in several ridings where they won by a slim margin. I've just learned that robocalls is all one word so better bring that up-to-date, who knew? And the term vote suppression. Add that to the lexicon. Next it will be voter suppression. Yikes.