Misconduct alleged in Ontario PC nomination battle
theglobeandmail.com
By JUSTIN GIOVANNETTI
May 16, 2017
Ontario’s Progressive Conservatives received a complaint accusing the party’s president of stuffing the ballot box in a contested nomination battle the day before Leader Patrick Brown announced that outside auditors would supervise future nominations.
Vikram Singh lost his bid to be the PC candidate for the riding of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas earlier this month. His campaign filed an appeal of the result with the party on May 7, alleging that “gross irregularities and voter fraud” took place at a vote overseen by the top executives of the PC Party, president Rick Dykstra and executive director Bob Stanley. The Globe and Mail has obtained a copy of the 11-page appeal document.
Mr. Brown did not respond to the allegations on Tuesday, but previously told reporters he had hired auditors from PricewaterhouseCoopers to monitor future nomination meetings because the party was seeing “more energized” contests than in past years.
The decision to bring in outside observers was unprecedented, said PC party officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak with the media. They said the move showed that Mr. Brown had lost confidence in the party executive’s ability to manage the races just over a year before the next general election.
Mr. Dykstra, Mr. Stanley and the party did not respond to a request for comment. The appeal has not been adjudicated yet.
According to the appeal, Mr. Singh was leading after the seven ballot boxes at the nomination meeting were counted, but lost the four-way-race to candidate Benjamin Levitt after the inclusion of votes cast at the credentials table, an area where voters who need to have their party status verified are directed and which is supervised by party officials.
Mr. Stanley and Mr. Dykstra stood at the credentials desk during most of the meeting, according to the appeal. Mr. Singh’s campaign alleges he was on track to win the contest, but Mr. Levitt won because 202 of the 345 ballots cast at the credentials desk went to him.
A similar appeal was lodged after voting in the riding of Ottawa West-Nepean at which some of the same party officials were present.
“We have filed an appeal and we are confident in the internal process and we will work with the party to ensure that integrity in the system is maintained,” Mr. Singh told The Globe. “Those involved in allegations of criminal activity at nomination meetings should be held accountable. I have faith in the leadership of Patrick Brown.”
The Singh campaign alleges in the appeal document that it is improbable that 345 ballots were cast at the credentials table in less than the two hours and 30 minutes set aside for voting. According to the appeal, an average of one ballot cast every 26 seconds would have been required to reach that tally, and cases at the credentials desk require extensive identification checks by party officials. It can take several minutes for a single voter to prove who they are, their address and party status and then can cast a ballot.
When challenged about the count that night, Mr. Dykstra and other party officials resisted an open count of the credentials ballots, according to an account of the evening written by Amanpreet Bal, Mr. Singh’s chief scrutineer at the vote, and attached to the appeal.
Mr. Bal wrote that when he and Mr. Dykstra both counted forms from the credentials desk and came to different counts, the party president left the room. “He grabbed all the forms and said that these will be counted by party’s lawyers and placed them into a box,” he wrote.
Mr. Levitt, works for local MP David Sweet and was endorsed by former federal foreign affairs minister John Baird.
Mr. Levitt’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
Jeff Peller, another candidate in the race, also sent an appeal to the PC party on May 9, saying a “lack of administrative oversight, failure to implement fair procedures and the involvement of potentially biased scrutineers” cost him the race.
