The voice at the other end of Ken Hancock’s telephone line on Election Day 2011 sounded official enough.

It was a woman who claimed to be calling from the Conservative Party of Canada telling Hancock that his voting location had been changed from the usual location — a local school not far from his Pender Island, B.C., home — to the municipality of Saanich on Vancouver Island.

The supposed new location meant that Hancock would have to drive to the ferry dock at Otter Bay on the northwest side of Pender Island, take a 40-minute ferry ride south to Vancouver Island, and then drive another 30 kilometres to Saanich to cast his ballot.

“It was very strange,” Hancock told the Star Tuesday. “When I started asking her questions, she shut me down pretty quickly and actually hung up.”

Stories like Hancock’s are attracting attention as Elections Canada investigates complaints that voters received harassing phone calls and “robo-calls” during the 2011 general election campaign that misled people about polling location changes.

On Tuesday, outraged oppositions MPs continued to hammer the Conservatives over the allegations and repeated calls for an independent probe into the tactics, which they say were used in at least 40 ridings nationwide. The outrage grew as court documents from the Elections Canada probe showed that a disposable cellphone behind robo-calls to Guelph voters was registered to Pierre Poutine, of Separatist Street in Joliette, Que.

Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro said his party had no role in the misleading calls in Guelph. “The Conservative Party of Canada does not place intentionally misleading calls to voters. We simply do not,” Del Mastro said.

Guelph resident Dave Hudson says he received a message on his voicemail from someone claiming to be from Elections Canada advising him that his voting location had changed.

“This is an automated message from Elections Canada,” the female voice said. “Due to a projected increase in voter turnout, your poll location has been changed . . . We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.”

The message finished by urging voters to call a 1-800 “hotline” if they had any questions. The same message in French then follows. The number is no longer in service.

Hudson, a librarian at the University of Guelph, says he immediately suspected that something wasn’t right as the “new” voting location, according to the message, was the Old Quebec Street Mall in downtown Guelph — much farther than the legitimate location, Laurine Public School, which is about a three-minute walk from his home. He had also heard reports of strange calls similar to the one he received being made to other residents.

“It does make me wonder what would have happened if my circumstances were different,” said Hudson, 35.

“If I was a single parent living further from the polls and operating on a tight time frame, for instance, this might quite realistically have meant the difference between voting and not voting, especially if I were heading to the polls for the first time. It’s creepy because electoral processes don’t work if these sorts of differences in information access exist.”

Elections Canada spokeswoman Diane Benson says the agency does not have phone numbers of electors and does not call to advise of changes to voting locations. She says Elections Canada mails out revised notification cards to voters when changes occur.

Benson noted that 127 of 15,262 voting locations across the country — fewer than one per cent – were changed during last year’s campaign.

While many complaints centre on the riding of Guelph, currently held by Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, the Star has heard from people across the country that they received either suspicious robo-calls or harassing calls from people urging them to vote for a particular candidate or party.

Calvin, Ont., residents Linda Hearst and her husband, Ken Ferance say they also received a strange call on election day. Hearst says shortly after they voted, they received a call directing them to vote in the town of Mattawa, about 20 kilometres east.

Both Hearst and her husband worked on Liberal candidate Anthony Rota’s campaign and are concerned the calls may have skewed the vote in their riding (Nipissing-Timiskaming). Rota lost to Conservative Jay Aspin by 18 votes.

“It doesn’t seem so funny now, especially since Anthony lost by only 18 votes,” Hearst told the Star in an email.

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