‘ VERY HIGH’ NUMBER OF BALLOTS IN CONSERVATIVE LEADERSHIP VOTING MAY BE DISQUALIFIED.
As many as one in five votes may be disqualified
OT T AWA • Less than two weeks before it elects a new l eader, the Conservative Party has confirmed that some voters have submitted their mail- i n ballots i ncorrectly, which could result in their votes not being counted. Front- runner Maxime Bernier’s campaign claims that as many as onefifth of ballots received by the party are at risk of being disqualified.
The biggest issue, apparently, is that ballots must be accompanied by a signed declaration and photocopy of a form of personal identification that includes a name, photo and a home address matching the one to which a voter’s party membership is registered.
Campaigns are allowed to have scrutineers in place at a Toronto office of the audit firm Deloitte, where envelopes received by the party are being opened to verify voters’ supporting documents ( though the votes themselves are not yet being counted). Each envelope is supposed to include the declaration, the copy of the identification and a sealed packet containing the ballot itself.
Bernier’s scrutineers have noticed “just about one in five,” or roughly 20 per cent, of the sealed packets containing the ballots were being set aside in a pile for review, spokesman Maxime Hupé said Tuesday.
Scruti neers for Eri n O’ Toole, another top- tier candidate, reported similar figures, said O’Toole spokeswoman Melanie Paradis.
“We haven’t seen a hard number, so I couldn’t confirm the 20- per- cent figure. But it is very high. It is significant,” she said.
The party believes many voters will turn out to have simply put the supporting documents into the smaller packet with their ballots, rather than in the main envelope.
The ballot- packets themselves will not be opened until closer to the election, when scrutineers will confirm whether they contain t he missing s upporting documents. If they do, the ballot will still be processed and counted, said party spokesman Cory Hann. If some of the packets containing ballots but not the necessary documents corroborating the voter’s identity, they will be tossed.
“This is an issue that aff ects everyone probably equally. I don’t think it places any one candidate at an advantage or at a disadvantage,” said Paradis.
The party wouldn’t confirm the campaigns’ 20- percent estimate, saying it doesn’t have an actual number of envelopes being set aside. It doesn’t have a total number of ballots received, either — the focus, right now, is on verifying rather than counting.
“At this time, we don’t have an official count of how many have been verified and how many have been set aside but it would appear the majority are being verified without issue,” Hann said.
Hamish Marshall, campaign manager for Andrew Scheer, said that in the past few days they’ve received “hundreds” of emails from supporters concerned about how they mailed in their ballot. And those are just people “aware t hey might have made some kind of mistake,” he said.
Members who want to request a new ballot for any reason had to do so by the end of Tuesday. Ballots must be received by 5 p.m. Friday, May 26 in order to count.