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OTTAWA — Three days before the last federal election, Elections Canada confronted the Conservatives about suspicious calls directing voters to the wrong polling stations but were met with denials of any wrongdoing from the party’s lawyer, internal emails show.

In one email, an official with the agency reported a growing number of misleading calls as voting day approached and said some were worried that a “scam” to mislead voters was under way.

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The emails, released under the Access to Information Act, show that voters in ridings across Canada believed they had been misled by Conservative callers.

This is getting pretty suspicious. The workers in the returning office think these people are running a scam

They also cast doubt on the theory, advanced by some Conservatives, that reports of so-called “poll-moving calls” were invented by voters who flooded Elections Canada with nearly 1400 complaints after news of the robocalls scandal first broke in February.

The message from Elections Canada staff trace a timeline that began with the first reports of the calls on April 29, three days before the vote, when the agency began to field inquiries from concerned voters.