Redial denial

Premier Kathy Dunderdale, scrumming on  February 20, 2013:

You know something, we don’t spend our whole day sat around pressing redial, redial, redial, redial.

Mount Pearl MHA Steve Kent on On Point Radio, February 22, 2013:

I’m a busy MHA. I’m sure that Ms. Rogers and Mr. Joyce are quite busy as well. I’m very active in my district, I’m active in my department and government. I don’t have time to sit at a computer and try and figure out how to manipulate a poll. Do I participate? Absolutely. Do I encourage my caucus colleagues to participate? Absolutely. Do I encourage party supporters to participate? Of course I do, just like other parties would. But there’s no manipulation to it... My one staffer, my constituency assistant, is as busy as I am, and I’ve not witnessed any of that activity [poll-rigging efforts by staff] that you’ve referenced.

Other Mount Pearl MHA Paul Lane on On Point, February 24, 2013:

One of the things that’s been put out there is that there is this major effort put out there; I can tell you that, look, as a matter of routine, when there are polls of interest, I will certainly put it out there to my colleagues and so on, to make sure that we participate. But, you know, we’re way too busy. I can tell you as an MHA, I have way too much to do to be concentrating on polls day in, day out. And some people have put this, you know, I’ll call it spin, out there, that somehow I’m sat in my office, my colleagues are sat in their office all day, voting multiple times. That’s absolutely untrue.

Former PC staffer Alex Marland and co-author, over two years ago:

Many respondents pointed out that VOCM questions concerning Premier Williams’ administration attract an exponential number of votes and that the results inevitably favour the governing party. Several bloggers have monitored the ‘juicing’ of results to support the Williams administration (Meeker, 2008; Whittle, 2008). Efforts are made to override server protections against repeat voting and bloggers provide instructions for doing so. One respondent provided us with tabular data of efforts to influence the outcome, which involved hundreds of automated repeat votes that were critical of Williams, and which almost instantly provoked an apparently automated response supporting the premier. This occurred only during the workday and not in the evening (one minister told us that party staff ‘go crazy’ clicking during the day).

Emphasis added.