BAY OF QUINTE, ON – Campaign officials for Chris Malette are seeking to clarify confusion over their official website address after a similar domain name was purchased by someone outside their campaign and is directing to the website for Conservative Party candidate Ryan Williams.
“We tried to purchase the domain ‘chrismalette.ca’ the day after I was nominated,” said Liberal candidate Chris Malette, “but it had been purchased hours earlier.”
Malette’s team then purchased ‘chrismaletteforquinte.ca’ which has become their official website address.
Several days ago, however, they noticed that ‘chrismalette.ca’ was active and was being redirected to the Williams campaign.
“We spoke to Ryan’s team and they have assured us they have nothing to do with this misdirection and that they do not know who is responsible and we take them at their word,” said Malette.
Malette campaign volunteers are now fielding dozens of messages by phone and online from people reporting the redirect.
With help from the public, campaign officials are investigating and now believe that at least 25 domains were purchased by this same person or group, including ‘chrismalette.ca’, ‘votechrismalette.ca’, ‘chrismalettebq.ca’ and others.
“I would encourage this individual or group to do the right thing and direct these urls to our campaign website. I really don’t think you are doing either campaign any favours with this kind of behaviour. This is a contest about policy and leadership. Let’s not get distracted,” Malette commented.
