During the 1968 federal election, a campaign team working for an underdog Conservative candidate in New Brunswick decided to deface a bunch of their candidate's lawn signs.

The reasoning was that Char-lie Thomas might get some sympathy votes if people saw "Vote Liberal" scrawled across his signs, indicating he likely was the victim of dirty tricks by his opponents.

Their scheme - as told in Leaders and Lesser Mortals, a 1992 book about backroom politics - ultimately was found out by the police. No charges were laid because it was their own property the campaign workers had damaged. Thomas ended up winning his seat, despite the Tories losing that general election to the Liberals under Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

The past 10 days have seen a public outcry over revelations that misleading phone calls were made to voters during last year's federal election campaign in an alleged attempt to suppress the vote in some ridings....