Author: RossK

. …The Manning Centre’s Pre-Election Campaign School? First off, remember this letter to The Globe’s editor to UVIC public-admin guy John Fryer earlier this week: In January, 2010, my UVic inbox had an e-mail invite from a democracy centre to attend a campaign school. Intrigued, I signed up for the

TheManning-UpOfThe… RepublicOfBananastanVille Hey. Look who’s going way, way out for breakfast this morning according to a nice bit o’ proBlogging by the VSun’s JFowlie: Premier Christy Clark will be in Ottawa Friday morning, giving the opening remarks at the 2012 Manning Networking Conference. Organized by Preston Manning’s Manning Centre for

AllTheFraudThatFits TheManning-UpRepublicOfBananastanVille From the TStar (but only because the MoCo refuses to post a text version): Alleged voting irregularities in the 2011 federal election have taken a new twist with accusations there was a last-minute rush of previously unregistered voters who cast ballots in the Eglinton-Lawrence riding, according to CBC.

ThePhonesKnow InAndOutAndInAndOutAndInAndOutVille Any second now, I reckon. After all, the last I checked Nipissing-Temiskaming is not Guelph: OTTAWA—Federal elections investigators are probing robo-calls in another riding — Nipissing-Temiskaming in northern Ontario — that could have tipped one of the tightest races in the country in favour of the Conservative party,

ThereWereNoMice LikeMary’sAnon-O-MiceVille This one is from Bill Tieleman. And it starts like this: BC Mary was one of Canada’s most tireless, prolific, dedicated and dogged bloggers – with an absolute commitment to finding out the truth about the BC Legislature Raids – the Basi-Virk case – the BC Railgate story.

Non-StopBadgeringIsThem ‘Ethical’FundraisingVille From Dammit Janet!: “It appears that the CPC has engaged in other scam practices with phones. It’s not enough that companies were paid (more on that below) to contact voters and *prank* them with harassing calls, while pretending to be the other parties. It engineered a campaign to

omplaints? WeDon’tNeedYourStinkin’ComplaintsVille The header above, is how we ended a recent post about patient-zero in the RoboCall saga. It is a story about one riding, Saanich Gulf-Islands, where fraudulent robo-calls were clearly made in the name of a non-existent front group during the 2008 campaign. So. In the wake of

AllTheTrainingThatFits EthicalVoterSuppressionVille If this is for real which, according to Dave, we have no reason to think that it is not, this is much, much worse than anyone has imagined so far. From Monday March 5th’s ‘Letters to the Editor’ page of The Globe and Mail: In January, 2010, my

OurFriendForever BCMaryVille Norm Farrell captured an important tribute to BC Mary today: Today in British Columbia’s Legislative Assembly, Leonard Krog, Opposition Critic For The Attorney General, said this: “I rise today to ask the House to pay its respects to the passing of one of British Columbia’s most courageous citizen

. ….The People Whose Franchise They Were Trying To Suppress Were NOT Low Information Voters? When I listened to Dean Del Maestro on Evan Solomon’s radio show on Saturday I was aghast. At just about everything he said. But I was truly flummoxed when Mr. Del Maestro tried to wave

For Mary, wherever we may find her. Because both her aim and her heart were always true. (many, many tributes to follow I’m sure – Mine will be just one of them) .

AllTheFraudulentFrontGroupsThatFit SubversionVille …The ‘Progressive Voters Association Of Saanich Gulf-Islands’ Do? Well. They called up voters in Saanich Gulf-Islands on election eve and told them to vote for a non-existent NDP candidate when said candidate had dropped out of the race weeks earlier. And then they claimed they were associated with

AllTheFrontGroupsThatFit SubversionVille …The ‘Progressive Voters Association Of Saanich Gulf-Islands’? Apparently Elections Canada didn’t want to know in 2008. But maybe they do now? (more to follow….) .

There’sNoUkeLikeCoverUkeVille First, The Original….Because these days….Well….Mr. Roboto is…. Us. And next the only Uke cover in the whole, wide universe…. OK. Now. For something real… _______ I’ll have more on why I reckon the RoboCall Strate(r)gy was doomed to fail from the beginning (and/or at least doomed to be uncovered)

NeitherPlausible NorDeniableVille Normally, I don’t do stenography. But the following, from Glen McGregor’s OCitizen blog, leads down such a deep, dark well that it cannot be ignored. If only because I reckon we will be returning to it over and over and over again as the increasing candlepower of the

AllTheScapesThatFit OursIsAVastLandVille So. It would appear that the locals running Marty Burke’s Guelph campaign were chafing a little under the central party machine’s iron (target?) fist just as the campaign got rolling (i.e. before the Guelph U student ballot box conflaguration). How do we know this? Because pre-election day Email

KnownKnownsWeDon’t KnowVille …Stated to Evan Solomon on ‘The House’ this morning went pretty much like this (paraphrasing)…. “If we did it, we would know it…. And we don’t (know it)…So…We didn’t (do it)…” It’s the Rumsfeld defense! .

Complaints’RThem? TSMUVille …And Norm Farrell loves to make ’em out of publicly available data to make a point. So. How many of those 31,000 official complaints from official Canadians to the officials at the officially sanctioned Elections Canada came from ridings where the officially central (i.e. not local) Federal Conservative

DidTheyHearTheBullseyesSwinging ConVille ….And When Does It Need ‘Managing’? Well….. Apparently, if you are the Conservative Party of Canada, and you need to identify and then manage ‘target seats’, you’ve been turning to a very fine fellow named Mark Spiro for quite some time now. How do we know this? Because

OfHockeyRinksAnd Round-AboutsVille And why do we ask? Well. At the tail end of his recent column on the RoboCall incident that took place in the riding of Saanich in 2008 that was won by Conservative Gary Lunn, Lawrence Martin noted something interesting, which was the fact that Mr. Lunn’s campaign