Call Centre Staff: We knew voters were being misdirected
Newsbot @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:48 am
Title: Call Centre Staff: We knew voters were being misdirected
Category: Political
Posted By: BeaverFever
Date: 2012-02-27 09:23:10
Canadian
1Peg @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:48 am
"The woman said her script directed her to say she was calling on behalf of the Conservatives."
Ya sure, the Conservatives are going to stamp their name on this...My hunch is pointing towards the media.
BartSimpson @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:51 am
Canadians were also getting calls from call centers in the USA.
andyt @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 10:54 am
1Peg 1Peg:
"The woman said her script directed her to say she was calling on behalf of the Conservatives."
Ya sure, the Conservatives are going to stamp their name on this...My hunch is pointing towards the media.
Ya sure, the Conservatives are going to stamp their name on this...My hunch is pointing towards the media.
How could be all be so blind. Of course the dreaded liberal MSM is behind all this. The bastards, slandering the conservatives good name.
PublicAnimalNo9 @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:08 am
OK 1Peg may have crossed a line accusing the media, maybe. But c'mon, the call centre workers were told to lie AND tell the people they were calling them on behalf of the CPC. Seems a little too convenient.
BeaverFever @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:13 am
Your grasping at straws here 1peg.
The article is from the National Post = Right-wing conservative media outlet, so can the left wing conspiracy theory talk. By the Conservatives own admission, the Call Centre in question WAS IN FACT hired by the Conservatives for its campaign to place calls using their name.
If you read on in the Star article:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/poli ... staff?bn=1
$1:
On its website, RMG advertises itself as Canada’s largest direct-contact firm in the political sector: “We work exclusively with right-of-centre campaigns to develop fundraising and voter contact strategies that target your message to the right audience, maximize your vote-getting, and win.”
...Last December, the Conservative Party spokesman Fred Delorey, responding to a story in the Waterloo Region Record about a voter having been told to go to a wrong poll in a local riding, confirmed “the call came from a call centre that we hired for the campaign, using a line clearly labelled as belonging to the Conservative Party.”
In that case, the party said it was the result of a mistake because the voter named “was in our database twice” with the same phone number for two different riding profiles.
“The call was made by RMG, which was one of our companies hired to do calling by Kitchener Centre and the Party,” Delorey said. “Because she was listed as living in Kitchener Centre she was instructed to vote in a polling station in Kitchener Centre. We made over a million calls on Election Day. In this case there was a mistake.”
In that case, and in the cases revealed late last week in a Postmedia-Ottawa Citizen investigation, the Conservative Party insisted its “job is to get votes out, we do not engage in voter suppression.”
...Last December, the Conservative Party spokesman Fred Delorey, responding to a story in the Waterloo Region Record about a voter having been told to go to a wrong poll in a local riding, confirmed “the call came from a call centre that we hired for the campaign, using a line clearly labelled as belonging to the Conservative Party.”
In that case, the party said it was the result of a mistake because the voter named “was in our database twice” with the same phone number for two different riding profiles.
“The call was made by RMG, which was one of our companies hired to do calling by Kitchener Centre and the Party,” Delorey said. “Because she was listed as living in Kitchener Centre she was instructed to vote in a polling station in Kitchener Centre. We made over a million calls on Election Day. In this case there was a mistake.”
In that case, and in the cases revealed late last week in a Postmedia-Ottawa Citizen investigation, the Conservative Party insisted its “job is to get votes out, we do not engage in voter suppression.”
Ironically, the supposedly left-wing Toronto Star implies a plausible explanation, in that the call centre didn't proivde its employees with correct and up-to-date polling station info and ignored employee feedback. I worked in a call centre about a decade ago, its really a job where the managers just treat the staff like sub-human garbage.
$1:
The Conservative Party of Canada, in response to Star queries Sunday, did not deny its calls may have misdirected voters but portrayed these as inadvertent mistakes. It said that, in the final five days of the 2011 campaign, calls were made only to identified Conservative supporters.
...In an email sent Sunday evening, Conservative Party of Canada spokesman Fred Delorey said: “Elections Canada changed some poll locations during the election, which is their prerogative. Our job is to get votes out and wrong locations would hurt us, so to ensure our supporters knew where to go, we would ask them if they knew where their poll was. When they told us their poll was in a different location than was in our system, we would tell them that Elections Canada may have changed it, and give what we thought was the right address.
"We made around six million calls during the Election to identify our supporters and get them out to vote.”
...In an email sent Sunday evening, Conservative Party of Canada spokesman Fred Delorey said: “Elections Canada changed some poll locations during the election, which is their prerogative. Our job is to get votes out and wrong locations would hurt us, so to ensure our supporters knew where to go, we would ask them if they knew where their poll was. When they told us their poll was in a different location than was in our system, we would tell them that Elections Canada may have changed it, and give what we thought was the right address.
"We made around six million calls during the Election to identify our supporters and get them out to vote.”
If true, this could be more the fault of the call centre than the Conservative party (although, when you hire someone to act on your behalf, you are usually held responsible for their actions in some faction). That's assuming that there wasn't a dirty tricks man on the campaign team pulling stunts.
andyt @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:14 am
So this is a Lib/NDP plot? Those bastards. How fiendishly clever - blow the election in that riding but have great ammunition to get the CPC later on.
PublicAnimalNo9 @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:55 am
$1:
Call Centre Staff: We knew voters were being misdirected
And yet they still went ahead and made those calls. So, we know where the first batch of arrests should be coming from.
Brenda @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 11:58 am
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Canadians were also getting calls from call centers in the USA.
We CONSTANTLY get calls from call centers in the USA. I have won numerous trips, and have been offered to bring down my credit card debt various times from Texas, Oregon and Florida. I don't know WHICH cc-debt, but I am sure they know.
BeaverFever @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:00 pm
A decade ago, it was the other way around, with most cross-border call centre calls going North-South. My how things have changed.
andyt @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:23 pm
PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:
$1:
Call Centre Staff: We knew voters were being misdirected
And yet they still went ahead and made those calls. So, we know where the first batch of arrests should be coming from.$1:
“We called the RCMP,” she said. “We actually also told our supervisor about it.”
But no action was taken and employees were told to stick to the script, the woman said.
But no action was taken and employees were told to stick to the script, the woman said.
You really want to deflect this to anybody but the Reformacons, don't you.
1Peg @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:41 pm
andyt andyt:
1Peg 1Peg:
"The woman said her script directed her to say she was calling on behalf of the Conservatives."
Ya sure, the Conservatives are going to stamp their name on this...My hunch is pointing towards the media.
Ya sure, the Conservatives are going to stamp their name on this...My hunch is pointing towards the media.
How could be all be so blind. Of course the dreaded liberal MSM is behind all this. The bastards, slandering the conservatives good name.
Well andy, aside from politicians who risk losing everything including a big fat pension. Who else could pull this off? Who else would have the resources to make this happen?
DrCaleb @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:48 pm
1Peg 1Peg:
andyt andyt:
1Peg 1Peg:
"The woman said her script directed her to say she was calling on behalf of the Conservatives."
Ya sure, the Conservatives are going to stamp their name on this...My hunch is pointing towards the media.
Ya sure, the Conservatives are going to stamp their name on this...My hunch is pointing towards the media.
How could be all be so blind. Of course the dreaded liberal MSM is behind all this. The bastards, slandering the conservatives good name.
Well andy, aside from politicians who risk losing everything including a big fat pension. Who else could pull this off? Who else would have the resources to make this happen?
Like I said in the other thread - places like this don't work for free, and they deliver only the information the customer provides.
andyt @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:49 pm
The pols are the only ones to have anything to gain from this. What does the media get out of something like this? They don't have anything to lose from a criminal act? You're way too paranoid for your own good, but then that's a conservative trait anyway, isn't it?
DanSC @ Mon Feb 27, 2012 1:12 pm
Interesting if malicious.