[LINK] "Election fraud allegations raise doubts about N.S. riding results"

[rfmcdonald]

This story from the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, in Nova Scotia, provides an example of the sort of effect that the robocalling referred to in the previous post had in some ridings in last year.

The riding of Sydney-Victoria is located on Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island, while South Shore—St. Margaret's is located on the southern shore of mainland Nova Scotia, south of Halifax.

One of the ridings in question was Sydney-Victoria, where the Conservatives invested heavily in the hopes that Cecil Clarke would unseat Liberal incumbent Mark Eyking. Stephen Harper personally visited the riding twice during the campaign.

Eyking said Thursday his team knew something was wrong on election day when they started getting “disturbing” calls from supporters. Some voters were complaining about incessant phone calls, even though the Liberal communications team had only contacted them twice, as is routine.

Others said they were sent to polling stations that were incorrect or did not even exist.

“They were complaining to our office, saying why would you send me to the wrong place?” said Eyking.

“Our local offices new something was up. Somebody on the other side was playing a really nasty game here.”

Eyking ended up edging out Clarke by just 860 votes to hold onto the riding. His team never followed up on the suspicious calls.

[. . .]

NDP MP Pat Martin said the controversy raises doubts about whether the Conservatives fairly won the 2011 election or if they cheated their way to a majority.

“It’s outrageous, it’s disturbing, it’s as offensive as it can possibly be if you care a damn about the electoral system,” said Martin.

Martin accused the Conservatives of trying to steal eight ridings across the country wherein the NDP discovered suspicious activity tied to robo-calls. One of them was South Shore-St. Margaret’s, where NDP candidate Gordon Earle lost to Conservative Gerald Keddy.

NDP official agent Angus Fields said he remembers receiving “two or three calls” from supporters who were mysteriously directed to the wrong location to vote.

There was also an issue of some voters being deluged with pro-NDP robo-calls. Earle’s office was swamped with complaints for three days, but they were never able to rule out that it was an internal mix-up by NDP election headquarters. The party did not have a definitive answer by deadline Thursday.

NDP riding association president Wolfgang Ziemer conceded those issues would not have changed the final result. What was expected to be a tight race ended up being a comfortable win by almost 2,900 votes for Keddy.