Thank you Jessica. Could you please clarify what a "phone-through" is?
A: A "phone through" is when professional canvassers are given a script and phone through the membership lists in a given area. At no time are the lists released from party central and at no time is information about individual's responses to calls relayed in a way that could identify those people responding.
For your information, please read posts # 31 and #34 above.
The title of your post " Rumours versus facts on party lists: Let's not campaign nasty" would suggest that you might believe that the information contained in these posts may not be factual.
A: Yeah I do believe it may not be factual. If it was factual, people would have the integrity to use their real names and give substantive information on their allegations. How do we know they are not Liberal employees?
Questioning the integrity of a political party while lacking the integrity to use your real name -- really, people ought to think more critically about what they read if the poster is anonymous. If the poster is anonymous, I would assume that they have something to hide and I would trust their post far less.
How do you suppose this young gentleman was able to receive this kind of correspondance from the candidate? Accident?
A: Likely this young gentleman's area was a swing (close) vote last time or (also likely) it was a high turnout area so these citizens are being targetted. This is just conjecture, but campaign experience would lead me to believe that this may be the case. Certainly I would be targetting swing areas and high turnout areas in any campaign.
New Democrats (being members of both Federal and Provincial parties) get a lot of mail. Why would we ever release our lists and risk offending our donor base? New Democrats are pretty good at picking up the phone and have a passionate, civil discussion when something is bothering them about the party. Casting aspersions on a blog isn't the best way to find out what's going on. It was only luck that someone tipped me off about this thread.
Like I said: To the best of my knowledge our lists are not released.
J