Membership deadline passes in Tory race

OTTAWA — Conservative leadership candidates are shifting their attention from signing up new members to locking in their allimportant votes now that Wednesday’s crucial membership deadline has passed.

Businessman, reality-TV star and leadership upstart Kevin O’Leary was among the first out of the blocks to declare his membership total after the midnight cut-off, declaring he had enlisted 35,336 members in 69 days.

Lisa Raitt told supporters in an email she’s signed up at least 10,613 members, while Kellie Leitch said her campaign brought in 30,038 new memberships. Michael Chong’s campaign put his numbers at around 10,000.

The accuracy of the numbers is difficult to verify; the party doesn’t expect to release an official total until some time in April, and even then it will be difficult to clearly link new members with specific campaigns.

Indeed, given the way the coming vote will be structured, the raw figures don’t mean much.

Instead of “one member, one vote,” every riding in the country is allocated 100 points no matter how many members they have, and the points are allocated based on the share of the vote a candidate gets. They need a minimum of 16,901 points to win.

On top of that, members don’t have to just vote for one candidate. It’s a ranked ballot, so members can select up to nine names from the list of 14.

“With more than one ballot, Conservatives must consider more than just their first choice in deciding who to support,” Raitt’s campaign noted in an email to supporters.

O’Leary’s challenge comes after the party removed more than 1,300 people from its membership rolls after a review found they hadn’t paid for the memberships themselves.