Voters on both coasts report robocall confusion

While official investigations have centred on the riding of Guelph and a call centre in Thunder Bay, voters across Canada continue to come forward with their recollections of confusion over voting locations, caused by automated "robocall" telephone messages.

Elections Canada says it never informs voters of polling station changes by phone, so if someone received a call supposedly from Elections Canada about a polling station change during last spring's campaign, it was a fake.

Here are three more stories shared with CBC News this week.

North Vancouver, B.C.

North Vancouver voter Bruno Bisaillon was confused when he received an automated phone call telling him to vote not at his usual polling station but at one several kilometres away.

"I called Elections Canada right away … seeking for an answer, and seeking if it was legitimate or not," he told CBC News. "Unfortunately, I was not able to reach Elections Canada at the time."

He went to his regular voting location, as indicated on the voter's card he received in the mail. It was correct, and the call was wrong.

"I mentioned to my spouse that it was probably something very fishy," Bisaillon said. "And that it was probably some sort of illegal activity."

CBC News in Vancouver has received reports of misleading or harassing calls, both automated and live, in nine different B.C. ridings.

Conservative Andrew Saxton was re-elected in North Vancouver by more than 11,000 votes.

Saint John, N.B.

Saint John voter Charles Cochrane told CBC News on Thursday that he was confused when he received a recorded phone message purporting to be from Elections Canada two days before the election.

The message said his polling station had changed. But when he went to where he's always voted in the past to double-check, he learned the message was wrong.

"I went in [to the community centre] and I said, 'I can't vote here because I got a phone call saying my polling station wasn't here anymore and all that.' So I said that to them at the door and, [an official said] 'No, you're in the right place,' and so I went in and voted," he said.

Conservative MP Rodney Weston won the riding by fewer than 500 votes in 2008 but won re-election last spring by about 7,000 votes.

West Nova, N.S.

Helen Opie worked for Elections Canada last May, greeting voters at her local polling station in Granville Ferry in West Nova.

"A woman came, quite agitated because … somebody had called and told her [to] go out to — I think it was Mount Hanley, which is close to an hour's drive from Granville Ferry — and of course she found no polling station there," Opie told CBC.

"It was puzzling and none of us could figure it out and I think now we know why."

Two more voters showed up later in the day with similar stories, she said. But at the time, workers at the polling station couldn't figure out what was happening, so they let it go.

After hearing the national stories, she phoned Elections Canada on Monday to add her information to a growing list of complaints from ridings across the country.

Robert Thibault, the former Liberal MP for West Nova, says he hasn't seen a lot of evidence yet, but until now he'd assumed the confusion arose from mistakes on the voters' list. 

"One individual who gave me a call … [said] he'd received very alarming calls of people calling saying they were calling on behalf of the Liberal Party, repeatedly and at odd hours," Thibault told CBC.

After winning, then losing, close battles with Conservative Greg Kerr in 2006 and 2008, Thibault lost again to Kerr in 2011 by 4,500 votes.