Liberals struggle to get their voters out

Less than 43% have registered

OTTAWA — Less than half the almost 300,000 people who signed up to take part in the federal Liberal leadership race have registered to vote, despite getting an extra week to do so.

As of late Thursday, shortly before the midnight deadline, almost 43 per cent of supporters and members — some 126,000 — had registered.

The party had originally set a deadline of Mar. 14 but acquiesced to a request by front-runner Justin Trudeau’s camp to extend the registration period by one week, over the objections of several rival camps.

The Trudeau team argued the extra time was needed because the party was having trouble getting registration packages to more than 100,000 people, mainly Trudeau supporters, who signed up without providing email addresses.

However, the extension produced only about 21,000 additional registered voters. That’s despite a controversial move by the party over the weekend to call those who hadn’t registered and give them the chance to do so on the spot, sparking accusations that party brass were showing favouritism toward the frontrunner.

Hundreds of those who have registered may yet be disqualified. The list of registered voters is to be finalized by the party by midnight Sunday and all leadership camps will then have until midnight Tuesday to mount challenges against those they believe may be invalid.

Various camps say there are numerous suspect registrants, including a number of instances in which dozens of people — in one case more than 100 — have provided the same email address or home address.