Ex-NDP member raises ballot concern
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/09/2017 (2918 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A Manitoban is questioning the integrity of the federal New Democrats’ leadership race after receiving a ballot years after he believed he had left the party.
“I was definitely concerned,” Stonewall resident Brian Short said. “I had scribbled some not very nice things across the ballot and sent it back to them.”
Short said he let his membership lapse four or five years ago. His wife remains a member. They both got ballots in the mail earlier this month.
“The people that I am concerned about are the people who still are members,” Short said. “That really compromises the integrity of that voting process.”
The NDP would not confirm whether Short is on the party rolls, citing its privacy policy.
Short said he phoned NDP headquarters and was told to expect a call back within 48 hours. That was more than a week ago.
He said he also contacted the Charlie Angus campaign, which on Friday said it didn’t have a record of the complaint. The campaign said it has had other ballot issues with the sudden onslaught of new memberships.
Earlier this month, the NDP told media nearly 600 voters received two ballots and another 1,000 entries were being screened as possible duplicates. The party counted roughly 124,000 members in August, up from just 41,000 in late March.
“There’s always going to be a small portion of mistakes when you build a list like that,” spokesman Guillaume Francoeur said.
Francoeur said each ballot has a code, which it will screen against a list of duplicated names and only accept the first vote that comes in.
The federal and provincial NDP share membership lists. Party members are sometimes duplicated when they sign forms with different names.
Heading toward the voting deadline, the party instructed staff to issue ballots to people who claimed they lacked a ballot and created a list to be checked against later.
“The number of those kinds of irregularities is not… enough to compromise the process,” Francoeur said.
dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
History
Updated on Saturday, September 30, 2017 11:19 AM CDT: Edited