The party says more than 600,000 memberships were sold during the leadership race between February and June.
National Post and other media outlets were invited to a guided visit of the party’s ballot verification centre in downtown Ottawa Friday morning to get a glimpse at the preparations for the formidable task ahead, and learn how the party expects to have all the ballots counted for September 10, when the winner of the leadership race is to be decided.Party officials spoke to reporters on the condition that they would not be named.
Most ballots have already been sent out or are about to be sent to members. About 280,000 were sent out days ago in a first wave, and another wave of 380,000 was either being printed or shipped on Friday, with expectations that they would be in the mail by Monday, at the latest. A maximum of 35 stations are set up to verify the ballots, with whole-day operations planned to get as many of them checked as possible in any given day and keep up with the high volume.
Due to the expected high volume of ballots, party officials said they could not guarantee that members will be contacted if their ballot is found to be invalid, so they are urging all members to carefully read and follow the voting instructions enclosed in the ballots received by mail.Scrutineers from each leadership team will be allowed in the ballot verification centre when the process starts.
“We don’t want a repeat of 2020,” said one, referring to the last leadership campaign results, which were delayed by technical problems until the wee hours of the morning. Thousands of ballots were damaged by the automated envelope-opening and vote-counting machines.Article content
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