While there were 'suspected instances of potential identity fraud' in the 2017 UCP leadership vote, the Alberta RCMP said there wasn't enough evidence to lay charges.
Due to the sensitive and/or legal subject matter of some of the content on globalnews.ca, we reserve the ability to disable comments from time to time.The RCMP probe into the founding 2017 United Conservative Party leadership bid has concluded and no criminal charges are warranted. A massive investigation was launched after a 2019 complaint centred around voter fraud and a so-called "kamikaze" candidate. Morgan Black has more.
The second allegation was that voter fraud occurred in the UCP leadership contest, particularly that emails were created in order to receive PINs and vote on peoples’ behalf without their consent or knowledge.The RCMP investigation found “several suspicious cross-sections of voters where multiple votes were cast from the same phone number, or originated from the same IP address.
“There were multiple different mechanisms — sometimes it was an email address, the PIN was delivered, sometimes it was a phone system — and also how the vote was cast. It could be cast through a telephone, it could also be cast by logging into a website.“We have evidence to suggest there was potential fraud in the case of those votes. But it’s important to clarify that those matters have not been tested in court and there was insufficient evidence to lay a charge.
“One of the things I think this investigation revealed is that it would be challenging for any one individual to orchestrate a very broad fraud… The offence mechanisms here would have made that very difficult to affect the outcome.”“Albertans can be confident that a thorough investigation, independent of government, was conducted,” Jane said.
He said the RCMP doesn’t normally speak on cases where charges are not laid but said this case is rare and important to all Albertans.In an email, the United Conservative Party said: “We welcome the closure of this matter, which has concluded without the need for any further action and found that the vote’s outcome was unaffected.”“We could not provide an update without referencing two individuals because of the nature of the way the allegations came in,” Jane said.
“They did point out Elections Alberta has fined Callaway tens of thousands of dollars … but that was a violation of Elections Alberta regulations, not the Criminal Code.”“They couldn’t determine who those people voted for but there was something there, not enough to change the result, and they couldn’t connect the dots to prove criminal activity, but there was something there, that these were not unfounded allegations,” Bratt said.
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