Pallister says NDP manipulating seniors’ votes

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/02/2015 (4167 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opposition Leader Brian Pallister said today he’s not surprised than the rival NDP is dealing with accusations of voter interference and intimidation in the battle over who will lead the New Democrats into the next election.

The NDP’s election of leader committee on Thursday set aside all the mail-in ballots from Swan River for delegate selection for the March 8 leadership contest after it confirmed up to half a dozen ballots had been improperly filled out. The committee’s decision will require all 220 NDP members in the Swan River constituency to vote again on their choices for delegates, a move that will delay by about one week knowing which of the three leadership candidates takes or splits the 22 delegates.

Swan River NDP local president Laura Henderson has said retired MLA and former finance minister Rosann Wowchuk filled out at least two ballots belonging to an elderly couple.

Pallister said Friday the incident is a hallmark of how the NDP operates.

“The New Democratic Party has a history, especially in recent political campaigns, of trying to frighten people, and certainly they have gone out of their way to try to frighten seniors,” Pallister said. “They have a history of trying manipulate seniors, including my own mother, who was canvassed and was told she was going to lose homecare because Brian Pallister was going to do away with it.

“A political party that would manipulate the votes of seniors in an election campaign is bad enough, but manipulating the votes of seniors between election campaigns, too, is adding insult to injury. It’s disrespectful. It’s absolutely fundamentally wrong. It’s totally unacceptable, and a re-vote doesn’t change the fact there was an attempt to do that by senior members who should know better.”

In an unrelated matter, Premier Greg Selinger’s leadership campaign manager Kathleen McCallum has apologized to party members in Fort Rouge for an unauthorized, unprotected mass email sent out by a campaign volunteer.

The delegate selection meeting for Fort Rouge is Sunday. The constituency is eligible to send 23 delegates to the leadership vote.

 

bruce.owen@freepress.mb.ca