The story broke on PerezHudak.com earlier today. It is rumoured that the Hudak campaign filed a number of their membership 1.5 hours late of the deadline.
I’m hearing that the Tim Hudak campaign has failed to meet a deadline for submitting some of their paperwork, and as a result many of their memberships may be in jeopardy:
As you probably know the deadline to submit actual membership forms with signatures was today for the leadership campaigns – an electronic list was submitted last thursday to the party by campaigns.
Apparently Team Hudak submitted their forms 1.5 hrs late today and could result in all their sales being disqualified.
Rumour is that the Christine Elliott campaign is pushing to have these members struck from the list of eligible voters for the leadership election. The Leadership Election Committee is meeting tonight to consider the matter.
I’ve learned that about 5,000 memberships may be in questions. This was confirmed to me by sources close to both the Elliott and Klees campaigns.
Yet, where the story differs, and where it may have instead developed, is in the Elliott campaign reaction. I received this from the Elliott campaign addressed to the Party.
Dear Committee,
It has come to our attention that there has been a breach of Section 5 (b) of Guideline No. 2 issued pursuant to the 2009 Leadership Election Rules (the “Rules”) by other leadership campaigns. This is an unfortunate violation of a very clear set of rules.
The Leadership Elections Committee has a tough decision ahead of them regarding any reprimands it may levy, but the position of the Christine Elliott Campaign is that all members, who signed up in good faith to vote in this Leadership, should be given that right to vote, regardless of any error made by these campaigns.
This leadership race is an excellent chance to showcase the very best of the Ontario PC Party and it is in that spirit that we strongly urge you to permit these members to vote, even if they were invalidated by campaign error.
In the interest of fairness, let them vote.
Sincerely,
Andrew BoddingtonAndrew G. Boddington
Christine Elliott Campaign
This is either a sportsmanlike gesture from the Elliott campaign or an attempt to bring more attention to the issue and flesh it out within the news cycle.
UPDATE: I’ve heard that Elliott’s campaign lobbied the Leadership Election Committee all day to toss the Hudak memberships, but when they received a “definitive no”, that’s when the strategy changed to put out a statement supporting the memberships in question.
UPDATE: I’ve received formal communication from the Hudak campaign explaining what went wrong,
Regarding your story posted tonight, the issue in question requires an important clarification.
All memberships were submitted as per the established Party Rules before the required cutoff. Any member who signed up before 10:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 14 is entitled to vote next month.
This is simply an administrative issue. Because of the large number of memberships submitted to our campaign, we asked that an extension to file supporting documentation be granted to all campaigns more than 48 hours in advance of the deadline. We had no indication from anyone at the party that this request for an extension would be refused. The party failed to respond to our request until after the deadline, upon which we immediately filed all supporting documentation.
All memberships submitted by our campaign are valid.
Jeremy Adams
Communications Chair,
Tim Hudak Campaign