Federal election season is on in Canada, so the phones are ringing.

Who’s calling? Representatives from all the parties, of course. They receive lists of residents, and like telemarketers, carpet-bomb them with questions about support. “Will you vote for the X party?”

My guess is that a significant people are naive and honestly tell the callers their intentions. It gets worse: at the polling site, representatives of the parties get to match actual voters with their telephone records. So, they not only know how people will likely vote – they even know when those people actually do vote!

Why is this a problem? Well, if you tell the truth to the parties other than the one you actually support, then these others get a good sense of the closeness of the contest. If the race is close on the final polling day, they can try to scrape the bottoms of their support barrels, borrow some dead Chicago ex-residents who keep voting for Daley, and try to turn the race around. Who knows – they might even succeed occasionally. Or, early on during the campaign, your information could let the bad guys decide to cut their losses in your area and redirect resources to more contentious ridings.

So, when some stranger polls you about your voting intentions, you may be doing a disservice to your candidate if you answer. Shut up and vote (or don’t).