Despite being disqualified by the Conservative Party of Canada from becoming its next leader, ousted candidate Patrick Brown’s name will still appear on the ballot.
In an interview on CTV News Channel, Conservative Party Chairman Rob Batherson said they “just don’t have time to do a reprint” of hundreds of thousands of ballots and still meet the party’s deadline to announce a new leader on September 1. 10
Last week, the party announced that approximately 675,000 members will be eligible to vote in this year’s leadership contest, a historic number that far exceeds past leadership contests.
While the final membership verification process is still underway, according to party leadership contest spokesman Yaroslav Baran, the first batch of mail-in ballots bearing all six names have already been sent to conservative supporters who had memberships. prior to leadership. career process.
The party is scheduled to continue mailing ballot packages in batches over the next several weeks, with a requirement that all ballots be returned to the party by September 6.
The party had an April 29 deadline for candidates to submit required fees and membership signatures in order to get on the ballot as a verified candidate. This timing was a factor in their printing deadlines for ballots.
Questions about whether Brown would remain on the ballot arose after the Conservative Leadership Elections Organizing Committee (LEOC) announced Tuesday night that it had decided to disqualify Brown, citing “serious allegations of wrongdoing.” ” which referred to the federal electoral authorities.
In an interview with Evan Solomon of CTV News on Wednesday, Brown tried to fight back against what he called “phantom” allegations, claiming his campaign “didn’t do anything wrong.” Brown also indicated that he was evaluating his options to challenge elimination from the race. However, Batherson told CTV News that the game’s rules “do not allow a disqualification decision to be appealed.”
This is not the first time in recent years that the party has held a leadership election with a candidate’s name on the ballot who was no longer in the running.
In 2017, then-leading hopeful Kevin O’Leary dropped out of the race after the ballots were printed.
“So the ballots will go out, like they did with Kevin O’Leary’s name in 2017, and with a preferential ballot, there will be a second and a third choice. That will take effect once a candidate submits the ballot,” he said. Batherson on Wednesday.
Despite this considerable shakeup in the race, Batherson said the party has no plans to delay the process in any way, and all current deadlines will stand, including naming the winner at an event in Ottawa on September 10.
As for what Brown’s continued appearance on the ballot may mean when it comes to how Conservative Party members decide to fill out their classified ballot, Conservative strategist and president of Texture Communications Melanie Paradis said in an interview on CTV News Channel that it will be something to see Brown had previously said that her campaign had registered approximately 150,000 members.
“It’s going to be very interesting to see how this plays out. Where do those voters go? The people you recruited, are they going anywhere? Or will they fall? In which case, that would completely change the math of points in each race,” Paradis said.
“It’s a really complicated algorithm. It’s not a very straightforward one member, one vote type of rule set. We have it weighted by the driving, and that makes things very difficult to predict and how this could affect the race.
With files from Sarah Turnbull, Mike Le Couteur and Evan Solomon of CTV News