Free Party of One by Michael Harris Page B

an incomingvoice call to “Poutine’s” burner phone from a number in the area code for Fairport, New York. The call lasted twenty-one seconds. When Mathews tried these numbers, they were perpetually busy or out of service. The US calls and texts baffled investigators.
    Mathews found that RackNine received thirty-three calls from phones at Marty Burke’s campaign headquarters and the Guelph Conservative Electoral District Association, from March 26, 2011, through to election day. The contact person was Andrew Prescott. Burke’s deputy campaign manager, he had used his account at RackNine to send out a mass warning to the public late on election day about the bogus robocalls—long after Burke communications officer Michael Sona issued his press release doing the same thing.
    In a sworn statement, investigator Mathews laid out his conclusion about the considerable stealth used by whoever had made the calls: “I believe that the individual(s) behind the misleading calls which are the subject of this investigation would not want a local campaign to be identified with the calls, as they amount to improper activity, and consequently, I believe that any expense would likely be omitted to a campaign return.”
    Marty Burke’s campaign office wasn’t the only group calling RackNine. According to investigator Mathews, records of incoming contacts to the Edmonton firm showed forty calls from the Ottawa and eastern Ontario area code 613. Nine of those calls were traced back to voice recordings for Rebecca Rogers, a contact person for local media during Harper’s campaign stops, and Chris Rougier, the party’s manager of voter relation programs. Both worked at headquarters with Jenni Byrne, who ran the 2011 national campaign. 2 Rogers made eight calls to RackNine on April 30, 2011, and Rougier made one call on May 1, 2011. A Conservative official maintained that the party’s central campaign merely used RackNine to promote Harper’s events, and that Rebecca Rogers arranged these legitimate calls. The one call toRackNine that HQ never explained was Chris Rougier’s, the day before the election.
    RackNine’s service worked as follows: The customer would provide three things: a recording of a voice message; an electronic file of phone numbers to be called; and finally, automated scheduling instructions, including what caller ID number they wanted displayed. The firm’s automated process would then call the numbers on the list with the recorded message according to the client’s scheduling. RackNine could place 200,000 calls an hour at only 1.9 cents a call. Meier said he did not listen to the messages and that his clients normally settled their accounts using PayPal, an internet payment service. He estimated that RackNine placed ten million calls from about two hundred accounts during the 2011 election campaign. At a price of just under 2 cents per call, the robocalls could be considered a bargain: the whole operation cost about $200,000. The high-tech system was capable of doing “serious damage.” In 2010, Meier had also described his system as a “political superweapon.”
    Meier was able to locate a digital copy of the fake election message that “Pierre” had sent to Guelph residents, and played it for Mathews. He also located a second message the same client had uploaded but later deleted, which was never sent. Although technically deleted, the message was embedded within RackNine’s sophisticated logging system. As a matter of policy, the firm retained a record of all transactions with clients, including deleted material. It was the best way to deal with any dispute that might arise with a client. When Mathews listened to the second message, he noted that it appeared to support the Liberal Party in Guelph. According to the original customer instructions, the same list of non-supporters used for the fake Elections Canada message was to be called, with two major differences: the calls were to go out to Liberal