RackNine sues Pat Martin and NDP for $5 million

The Harpers should fix health care not elections.

I always thought we are living in a banana republic. This confirms it.

DAY-O!

It's too bad that Canadian voters will tend to want to punish the Harpers at the polls in 2015 for this misunderstanding with election rigging. It's all about appearances. Politics can be a dirty game at times. I feel really badly for Steve and the entire colonial administrativeship. They didn't deserve this. I'm sure Racknine are just innocent bystanders to it all. How could Matt Meier and Rackneiners possibly know that a lone fraudster was using their services to break federal laws and rigging the election? 

Actually they would probably have greater success sueing the CPC ......all they would have to show is how the CPC used them for illegal activity's , that eventually led to their business being ruined and as a result  associated with comments that were warranted due to the nature of the crimes and the people who said them. That would be easy to prove as the cons rigged the election using there equipment and services.

 

The judge will look and say the ring leader was the CPC and therefore the REAL guilty party....have at it rack 9 ..that would be something even a jury would support....everyone for that matter...the evidence is there and the circumstantial evidence shows who the benafactor of the crimes are , and it's pretty open and shut...however the evidence is growing by the day on the tactics of the CPC ..the lies and deciet would make any testimiony they give to the contrary questiionable and very unreliable to say the least..there credibility is garbage .  

Pursuing the Pat M. lawsuit makes rack 9 look like they are in partnership with the CPC..the party of criminal activity and election rigging, wrecking there credibility.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-QvXax88J8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0eQgUpkJ1Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ns8LD5Q8ecc

 

"I predict historians will see my neighbour John Doe as the greatest serial killer since Clifford Olsen." Great legal strategy, eh? Makes me immune from a lawsuit.

That Pat Martin, he's a tactical genius - always calculates the consequences before he says a word publicly.

 

 

Here the beauty/horror of it, its the attack people will remember, not source or the adendums, but thw attack. So if I had a national news paper and ran the headline senior dipper official suggests Tories plan to sell Alberta to North Korea, six months later what they'd remember is oh the, tories plan to sell Alberta to North Korea, but the extra bullshit protects the paper legal and socially.

I could see the Liberals pulling their punches, but the NDP is used to getting sued.

Our enemies in the mediz use this tactic all,the time, why can we?

Well, I think it depends who you direct your comments at. IANAL, but if Ezra Levant says "Environmentalists are a bunch of moose-humping tree-spikers", he's probably on safe legal ground, because "environmentalists" are not a discrete, identifiable group of people.

Whereas if he says "Greenpeace directors are a bunch of moose-humping tree-spikers", he might have some legal problems. Because he's accusing, pretty much by name, a specific group of individuals of commiting crime.

Rack Nine, I would think, is more comparable to "Greenpeace directors" than to "environmentalists". Now having said that, going by the quoted comments on this thread, I'm not quite seeing where Martin would be commiting libel. Okay, "Edmonton hillbillies" might not be the smartest thing to say, if the NDP is looking to build on whatever support it currently enjoys in Edmonton(and probably wouldn't  play so well to an Edmonton jury), but I don't really see how it's anything more than a typical regionalist insult. Maybe "rascals" and "punks" are thought to imply criminality? Or Racknine's lawyers are just shooting in the dark, hoping to hit anything they can.

These are statements of fact, alleging wrongdoing on RackNine's part - criminal wrongdoing, actually. How is that not defamatory?

 Well, as far as "defraud" goes, he said "defraud the electoral system", which I would take as metaphorical. I don't think you can "defraud" an electoral system the way you can defraud, say, a bank or a person.

But what if he had just said "the phone calls were meant to mislead voters"(which is what I assume he meant)? Isn't it already being reported in the papers that misleading phone calls were made? From a Globe And Mail article...

 

Automated phone messages had fanned the Southern Ontario city earlier in the day, erroneously telling residents their polling station had changed. Hundreds of voters fell for the hoax

 

Or is the issue here that Martin was accusing Racknine of being involved, when in fact Racknine's involvement remains unproven(rather than the nature of the accusations themselves)?

 

This is news to me, how often does the NDP get sued?

Here are a few questions that should be asked. Presumably, Elections Canada, the CRTC and the RCMP understand this and are asking them. Having engaged in robocalling during the election for the Catch 22 campaign (1.2 million calls from my kitchen table), I gained some insights into all aspects of the process. We were clearly and firmly informed about the Elections Canada and CRTC rules by our service provider. We were informed about potential liability for breaking the rules and that the service provider might also face potential liability were we to abuse the system - e.g. calling "off-hours" or not identifying ourselves. We were also monitored by our service provider to help avoid human error (e.g. time zone differences).

1. How did the fraudsters specifically target opposition voters in order to misdirect them on e-day - i.e. where did the callers get their numbers from?  They may have very well compiled the numbers based on previous robocalls where they solicited voter intention. If Racknine was used to gather voter intention data, Racknine would have log records of all calls made and the results of the calls - i.e. a copy of the lists.The Cons also maintain a national database which is fed from a number of sources. If the fraudsters didn't get the numbers from Racknine, another robocalling service provider or the central Con campaign, where did the numberse come from? For me, this is the central question that could implicate the Conservative Party or its operatives or rogues.
2. If Racknine or another robocall service provider was involved in voter intention calls, who actually managed that first round of calls to build the lists? The local campaigns? The central campaign? From where? Did Racknine or other providers just hand over total control. Does their robocalling product have a "user interface" for non-professionals? Did the Conservatives hire a person or people to manage all aspects of the "legitimate" calling (call design, scripts, reporting, scheduling, etc)? Was this done by volunteers? What kind of advice did Racknine or other providers give?
3. Did the same people who put the lists together manage the e-day calling? If not, how did they get the numbers? Don't get distracted by whether or not the service providers were based in Canada or not. That is a red herring.
4. Who had access to the detailed results of any voter intention exercise? Were the results centralized or held at the riding campaign level? Were they provided to a Third Party? If so, was the Third Party registered and audited by Elections Canada? (they would have to be if they spent more than $5,000). If it wasn't a Third Party, then it would have to be the Conservatives - rogue or not because they were the beneficiaries.
5. Racknine must have been aware that its servers were being used on E-day. While clients can legitimately call voters to remind them that it's voting day, they can't "advertise" for or against any candidate or party. Does Racknine do due diligence to inform their clients about these limitations? How much traffic was on their system on E-day? How much of it was not related to the fraudulent calls? Was traffic higher or lower than a "typical" e-day? Also, some of the fraud calls were made before e-day.
6. Where are the log reports of the E-day (or pre-E-day) misdirection calls? These records should show which numbers were called, how many people answered the phone and how long they stayed on the line. This would be vital information if there are any challenges to the results if the number of completed calls was greater than the margin of victory. Racknine would have access to that information for Guelph which has been tied to their servers through Pierre Poutine. I would imagine that Elections Canada got a hold of it in their investigation but wouldn't take anything for granted.

The questions about this lawsuit that are being asked in the comments section at news sites (eg. CBC etc) are:

1.  Does this lawsuit harm Pat Martin and the NDP by making them look like they're not ready for prime time as the Official Opposition?

2.  Or, does this lawsuit help the Opposition parties and hurt the Conservatives by keeping the issue in the news and reminding people of the allegations against the Harper Cons?

I would say "2" because Joe Comartin's wife got one of those robocalls and traced the number to Racknine.  Racknine was definitely involved.  Either they knew the content of the robocall or they should have.

Being sued is a new angle that is apt to keep the story in the news until more information comes in.

Re Michael Chong - that is a division in the Tory party - those MPs who are acting as if these allegations are no big deal and those who are shocked. 

Backbenchers have nothing to lose but their reputations.  I doubt that the Backbenchers will do what Lucien Bouchard did and form their own grouping with a new name - but they may prove very difficult to whip.

Yeah Gary should post more often.

Some of you believe that; not all of us "around here" do though.

I'd venture to say a few of the people  outraged about this care very much about democracy. 

But that's a dispute probably best left for one of the many threads that have already been devoted to it.

 

 

I can only speak to the one experience I had and have no idea what Racknine's internal policies are but I doubt it's aloof as getting a cellphone or internet service. From my own experience, the more that we did on our own, the less we had to pay the service. We did receive some training. It was actually a lot of fun for a neo-phyte such as myself.

A quick glance at Elections Canada Third Party financial reports shows that our campaign may have been the only registered TP in Canada to employ robocalling. Most of the other "big spenders" took out newspaper and radio ads. That would mean that ALL other robocalls during the writ period had to have been conducted by political parties. If the fraudulent calls were done by "rogues", they may have also violated the Elections Act by not registering (if they spent more than $500.00).

I did write to the CRTC the other day to get a link to their policies on robocalling but haven't heard back yet. Thanks for the positive feedback Duncan and Fidel.