Conspiracy Up In Smoke

"The evidence gathered in the investigation does not lend support to the existence of a conspiracy or conspiracies to interfere with the voting process."
"Incorrect poll locations were provided to some electors ... some nuisance calls occurred."
"It is useful to note that the data gathered in the investigation does not lend support to the existence of a conspiracy..."
Elections Canada report

"Why take the risk in a risk-averse environment? You'd only do it where the risk has a high return, which it doesn't here. The culture of the party is not one conducive to freelancing. If you do, you get frog-marched out of the door and dispatched for life."
unnamed Conservative operative*

Exonerated from blame, but not cleared of suspicion from the left claiming to be 'democracy watchers' who are fond of their dearly-held belief that the current government of Stephen Harper's Conservatives will stoop to any low-down, underhanded feints to bring advantage to themselves and pain and misery to the opposition. To them the Prime Minister is not a man of principle, but an scheming opportunist.

Since no fault of deliberate, institutionalized, administrative, and party-specific wrong-doing was found, no charges will be laid, and that sorely pains the conspiracy theorists. Some nuisance calls did occur, concluded the investigators, but that fact alone does not equate with deliberate prevention of people from voting, according to Yves Cote, Commissioner of Canada Elections.

After the result of the probe was made public, charges that the Conservatives had hidden incriminating evidence and had refused to cooperate with the investigation went viral on the Internet; urban myths refusing to die a decent death. The commissioner owned to having received 40,000 communications relating to robocalls; 86% of which emanated from a petition; no specific information was available and they were discounted.

Of specific complaints there were 1,726 registered from 261 electoral districts, 379 of those complaints originating from Guelph, Ontario. No other riding produced any significant complaints. Of 308 ridings ten complaints or less originated from 275 of those ridings. Where over 15 complaints arose, investigators peered closely and found that fewer than 1% of complainants (six out of 557) hadn't voted because they claimed to have been given false information.

Two recordings of robocalls were discovered but the investigators described them as 'innocuous', and the single transcript uncovered giving incorrect polling information had been forwarded to a party supporter by his own party's local campaign. So, then, where's that elusive but damning evidence of deliberate malfeasance on the part of the Conservatives?

It's there all right, and plenty of it, but all in the feverish imaginations of the leftist Truthers.

*As told to Postmedia's John Ivison