[LINK] "Trial begins for lone junior Tory charged in robocall election scandal"

[rfmcdonald]

So it begins. From the Canadian Press, via MacLean's. What will come of all this, I wonder?

After a three-year investigation into almost 2,500 complaints in 261 ridings across Canada, the robocall scandal comes down to a solitary trial of one junior Conservative campaign staffer in a single southwestern Ontario riding.

Michael Sona’s trial is scheduled to begin Monday.

Sona, 25, is charged with “wilfully preventing or endeavouring to prevent an elector from voting,” having allegedly orchestrated an automated phone message scam to send non-Conservative voters in Guelph to the wrong polling stations during the 2011 election.

Sona, who was communications director for Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke, is the only person charged in the robocall affair.

He maintains he’s been scapegoated by his former party to protect those higher up the food chain who orchestrated what he believes was a conspiracy to suppress non-Tory votes that went well beyond Guelph.

“I had no involvement in this. At all,” Sona told Huffington Post Canada in a pre-trial interview last week.