Michael Sona- Fall Guy for the Harper Party Machine?

Oh those Conservatives... oh wait I meant Stephen Harper Party loyalists.

Again with their fingers in the pie.

After stunning revelations that people were misdirected to incorrect polling stations or non-existent ones, Elections Canada has traced the Election Day calls to Racknine Inc. an Edmonton company.

A quick peek at their site, 2call.ca, tells me they can process over 200,000 calls per hour as long as the destination phone grid can handle it. The best part is you only pay for the calls that connect.

I’m not a fan of these guys, I doubt you are either. Most of us have had meals interrupted by autodialers with Important Messages that we promptly hang up on, but they are a legal business. I don’t know how much responsibility these folks have in this case, but I do note that on television, those paid ad shows often have a disclaimer protecting the Channel.

After the News broke, the Harper Party Loyalists from Lord Stephen on down went into action in their best Sergeant Schultz voices crying out “I know nothink!”

And yet, within hours, the Stephen Harper Party machine had sweated out a confession from a young staffer, 23 year old Michael Sona. This is the same guy who tried to steal the ballot box at the University of Guelph during the last election. What was his punishment for that transgression? He was made a staffer for Stephen Harper Party MP Eve Adams.

So in a nutshell, a tainted Harper Party Loyalist is trotted out to take the fall for this. Any bets on whether money changed hands? Think the Party will help him secure employment for his “honesty” in coming forward?

All of this within hours of the story breaking. No one in the Stephen Harper Party knew a thing about it and now we have a patsy. Amazing.

In order to pull this off, Mr. Sona had to acquire an (almost) untraceable cell phone in Quebec, set up an account with Racknine Inc, encode a phone list of people who were not going to vote for the Stephen Harper Party, send that information to Racknine Inc, and finally change his voice to that of a young woman to record the message in both English and French.

All of this done in the midst of an election campaign, in a closely contested riding.

And he did it for 12 ridings?

That’s what they want us to believe.

Follow the money would be appropriate here…

The phone was a cash deal so it goes nowhere other than they should be able to find out where and when it was bought.

But someone paid Racknine Inc for their services.

Michael Sona may have had access to the polling done for his riding, but for the others I think not. It’s not like his candidate was a high profile Cabinet Minister.

There is just far too much stink for it to come from such a small fish.

What of the penalties for his actions. I gather he could be fined $5000 for Election Fraud. Can we multiply that by the number of calls made? If this was a punchup and he hit 5 people it would be 5 counts of assault. If he had 10,000 people called, shouldn’t that be 10,000 counts?

At $5K that would be $50 Million dollars. Bazinga!

For12 ridings? $600 Million. Double Bazinga!

For that kind of cash I’m sure he’d name names and give dates.

The skill and access to information needed to pull this kind of thing off is beyond what a 23 year old History student acting as Communications Director for a failed candidate would have.

You can call them Spooks or Black Ops or Dirty Tricks Committees but there was something going on and it wasn’t at the front line. It was much further up the food chain. How many Communications Directors for failed candidates got aide positions with the Government… not too many I’m sure. Maybe he was being rewarded for his actions that no one knew about.

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is probably a duck, and Stephen Harper is in charge of the farm.