OTTAWA—Automated phone calls that directed people to the wrong polling stations in the last federal election may have overwhelmingly targeted older voters, the Toronto Star has learned.

Elections Canada investigators sifting through a flood of complaints that have emerged about dirty tricks in the spring 2011 campaign have started to notice this pattern as they call individuals to verify details of the suspicious phone calls they reported receiving.

Most of those who received an automated phone call telling them their polling station had been changed say they were contacted early in the campaign by the Conservative Party and indicated that they would not be supporting their local Tory candidate.

Now federal elections officials say that the fraudulent phone calls appear to have targeted older voters.

“Every single person I’ve contacted has been (born) between 1947 and 1949,” said one unidentified Elections Canada employee who was following up on the complaints Friday morning.

The Star inadvertently overheard a number of telephone conversations between the woman and complainants located across the country while a reporter was reviewing election expense records at Elections Canada’s Ottawa offices.

The questions put to complainants included the content of the robocall, the date it was received and whether that person was able to recall or record telephone number from which the call came. The final question, of those calls that could be heard by the Star, was for the complainants’ age.

A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment or provide any additional information about the pattern investigators appear to have identified.

“You can appreciate that I can’t comment on a snippet of conversation that may have been overheard out of context,” said spokesperson John Enright.

The revelation suggests that whoever was behind the fraudulent robocalls that are now the subject of a massive investigation may have been working off of a more sophisticated list of electors than the barebones voter information provided by Elections Canada.

Enright said the list of voters that all political parties and local candidates receive during an election period contains only the names and addresses of electors. Combined, parties spend millions of dollars during a campaign to identify likely supporters as well as non-supporters and target them for donations and other forms of support.

“It speaks to a degree of sophistication that sort of flies in the face of the initial reaction that it was a scattergun approach possibly by some junior underling who maybe just tore off a page of the voter’s list,” said NDP MP Pat Martin. “It seems more targeted and focused and complex maybe than some of the stories would have you believe.”

Mitch Wexler, a Conservative voter-data expert, said political parties can supplement voter registration lists with census information and other data to paint a fuller picture of the electorate. But he said it is virtually impossible to isolate and target senior citizens.

The average turnout rate in the May 2011 election was 61 per cent, meaning that 14.8 million out of an eligible 24.3 million Canadians voted. A Statistics Canada survey released last month found voters aged 65 to 74 had an 82 per cent turnout rate — the highest of any age group.

Martin said seniors are also the most likely to fall for a fraudulent phone call purporting to come from Elections Canada about a polling station change, either because they are more trusting or less technologically savvy.

“Younger people might be a little more jaded about automated phone calls whereas seniors would be less familiar with them and more likely to believe it,” he said.

It is alleged someone with the Conservative party campaign in the riding of Guelph set up a robocall account with the aim of sending voters to the wrong polling station. The complaints received so far suggest the scheme targeted those who were likely to vote for Liberal or NDP candidates.

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Matt Meier, the owner of RackNine Inc., the Edmonton-based business that was used to send out the robocalls, has been able to track the unique identifying number, known as an IP address, of the computer behind the illegal phone calls, the National Post reported Friday. He has forwarded that information to Elections Canada investigator Al Matthews to help track down the alleged perpetrator.

Meier says the individual who set up the account identified himself as Pierre Jones, a University of Ottawa student from Joliet, Que. The cellphone used to place the robocalls was registered under the alias “Pierre Poutine.”

With files from Tonda MacCharles

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