There was a widespread but “thinly scattered” vote suppression effort across Canada during the 2011 federal election that ultimately did not affect the outcome nor warrant annulling results, a federal court judge has ruled. Justice Richard Mosely, in a 100-page ruling released Thursday, found that “misleading calls about the locations of polling stations were made to electors in ridings across the country” including six ridings at the heart of a lawsuit brought by the Council of Canadians against the Conservative Party of Canada. He said the purpose of the calls “was to suppress the votes of electors who had indicated their voting preference in response to earlier voter identification calls.” But Mosely said he was unable to conclude the vote suppression efforts had a major impact on the credibility of the vote.
There was no evidence led, he said, to show that voters stayed home in any numbers that would have affected the “magic number” that became the margin of victory in the ridings that were closely examined.
Mosely also said he did not have evidence to conclude that the Conservative party or any candidate, its voter identification and political marketing agents RMG and RackNine Inc. were directly involved in the campaign to mislead voters, saying it would impose “an impossibly high standard of proof.”
But the judge did point a finger squarely at the Conservative party’s database of voters as a source of information for whoever did orchestrate the voter suppression calls. “I am satisfied, however, that the most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC, accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this Court.”
Full Article: Robocalls: Widespread but ‘thinly scattered’ vote suppression didn’t affect election, judge rules | Toronto Star.
The Voting News
A News Service of the Verified Voting Foundation
