Quote:
Originally Posted by kwoldtimer
So Lisa Raitt is calling for the Party to expel any leadership candidate found to have violated membership rules. This, as Bernier's campaign accuses O'Leary's Sikh community organizer of offering to pay for other people's memberships (the accusation has been denied).
So far, this issue seems to have had surprisingly little resonace, with the Party itself seemingly thinking that the matter has been addressed by cancelling the improper memberships. Where's the accountability?
What am I missing? This seems like a serious matter to me but I'm beginnig to think that I just don't get it. What the heck is going on?
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The party brought in new rules stipulating that memberships have to be paid using a credit card, or by cheque. The reason the new rules were brought in was because in past leadership races - in all parties - you'd have candidates signing up new members and paying their registration fees, etc. So in order to prevent a candidate from buying thousands of memberships they now require proof that each member bought their own membership.
From the party's standpoint, they've shown that their verification process works. Those memberships that were deemed to have been purchased improperly have been canceled.
As for whether a candidate should be disciplined for it - which is more so what you're getting at I think - well that's easier said than done. First, you need to find out who actually did this, the culprit used an anonymous IP address. If that person was found you'd need to link them to a campaign, which should be pretty easy once you know their name. But then what? Say it was Bernier's campaign, do we know if him or his senior campaign staff knew about this? How would you be able to find that out? Should a candidate be disciplined for something a maybe unknown volunteer did? If that's the case one campaign could get their supporters to volunteer for another candidate just to get them in trouble.
The party is likely still reviewing this matter and will probably say more soon.
For all we know the Liberals could have done this and not one of the candidates.