Fears of skewed result in Tories’ rushed race

The Ontario Progressive Conservative party calls it Canada’s shortest leadership race ever, and evidence mounted Wednesday that the rushed process is unfolding with serious glitches.

Two l eadership candidates complained that prepaid “burner” credit cards are buying possibly bogus party memberships, and revealed that 500 “highly suspicious” applications had already been tossed out.

Meanwhile, the PCs themselves announced Wednesday they were extending a deadline for members to register for the election.

Organizers say that’s because the registration process is swift enough that not everyone has to sign up as early as first announced. But the decision comes amid widespread complaints the online system is too cumbersome and could undermine voter turnout.

All the various concerns have raised fears of a skewed result.

“It’s about the integrity and transparency of the voting system,” said Stephen Thiele, a lawyer for candidate Doug Ford, after emailing a complaint about the burner- card memberships. “At the end of the day, everybody needs to be satisfied that the process was conducted fairly.”

But Hartley Lefton, chair of the leadership organizing committee, said there have been relatively few memberships bought with prepaid cards, and officials are scrutinizing them carefully.

“We have been working hard to ensure the integrity of the membership list, irregularities have been flagged and we’re continuing to work closely with each campaign.”

The party still plans to start the electronic balloting on Friday, end it the following Thursday and announce results March 10, making for a six-week race. The haste is understandable, given the provincial election is June 7.

Ford’s campaign warned in a letter to Lefton’s committee about “the large-scale use” of prepaid credit cards to pay the $10 fee to become a PC member.

The worry is that the cards, with no identifying information attached, are being employed to buy memberships for people without their knowledge — or who do not actually exist. Whoever did the buying could t hen potentially control those votes.

The Ford team urged the committee Wednesday to cancel all memberships paid for that way.

Caroline Mulroney, another of the candidates, said in a statement she had also flagged the issue with the party, as well as problems around registering to vote.

“I remain concerned about t he potential f or fraudulent memberships,” she said. “The party has already removed almost 500 ‘ highly suspicious’ members from the list.”

Candidate Christine Elliott, a former member of the legislature, said in a statement Wednesday she was confident the party will ensure a “clean and legitimate” membership list.

Just how many members the party has and how many are legitimate has been a hot issue since the sudden resignation of former leader Patrick Brown last month. Brown had boasted last year of having 200,000 members, but interim leader Vic Fedeli said the real number was 127,000.

He promised an audit to ensure all those were valid. The party had said it would announce its new membership total last Friday, but has not done so.

Tory members have made a number of complaints about the voter- registration process, including receiving secret codes in the mail with letters that appear like numbers, and a time- consuming requirement to scan and upload photo identification.

Party member Scott Edward Bennett, a political scientist at Carleton University, decided not to register, afraid of what will happen to all those uploaded IDs.

“Unless it’s in the hands of one of the very few contractors in this country who can supply defence- level security, it’s vulnerable,” he said about the database. “It’s the kind of thing some of the enemies of the party might want to exploit.”

The deadline to register online to vote has been shifted from March 2 to March 5, but not because of problems; the system works smoothly enough that people can do it later and still be able to cast a ballot, Lefton said.