Chris Selley: Parties had better clean up nomination races before the government decides to

Nate Erskine-Smith, a departing federal Liberal MP and presumed candidate for the provincial party's leadership, is alleging all manner of skulduggery in the matter of his 19-vote loss to Ahsanul Hafiz, writes Chris Selley. Photo by HYUNGCHEOL PARK /Postmedia

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What are voters to make of a political party that can’t properly manage a riding nomination? The Ontario Liberals are the latest to pose that question implicitly — and not for the first time — to the electorate. Nate Erskine-Smith, a departing federal Liberal MP and presumed candidate for the provincial party’s leadership, alleges all manner of skulduggery in the matter of his 19-vote loss to Ahsanul Hafiz to represent the Liberals the forthcoming Scarborough Southwest byelection.

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“There was an organized effort by Mr. Hafiz’s campaign on Saturday to direct, monitor and pressure people throughout the voting process, from the time they walked into the building to after they cast their ballots,” Erskine-Smith’s chief scrutineer Andreas Katsouris alleged on Instagram. “Multiple people took calls on speakerphone or video so they could get instructions right in the voting booth.”

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“There were many instances of people taking pictures of their ballots on their cell phones,” Katsouris said. “In most of the world, this would be considered clear evidence of vote-buying.”

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Katsouris furthermore alleged that “dozens and dozens” of people voted using improper ID; that an “unusual number of people … claimed to have ‘just lost’ their driver’s licence or ‘just moved’ to the area”; and, perhaps most suspiciously, that 34 more ballots were counted than there were recorded voters.

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It gets worse. the politics newsletter QP Briefing notes allegations that Hafiz — who has been welcomed into the Ontario Liberal fold (rather unlike Erskine-Smith) — once posted a link on Facebook to “pornographic material depicting incest and sexual violence.” To that charge, Hafiz’s campaign replied to QP Briefing, rather oddly: “Hafiz was vetted by the green-light committee. They were well aware of the allegations.”

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So that’s all pretty wild, but hardly twice as wild as your average nomination controversy. They are often total gong shows. All parties, not least the federal Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre, face accusations of discrediting or smearing certain would-be candidates in hopes of favouring others. (Unlike Liberal leaders, who can appoint as many candidates as they like directly, Conservative leaders can only appoint eight. It’s good grassroots policy — zero would be better — but it’s perhaps also an incentive for the leader to employ other methods to get his way.)

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Candidate-vetting failures, too, plague party nomination races in a way that makes you wonder about how competent the people involved would be in office: Idiotic comments on social media; undisclosedcriminal charges; casual support for Hamas. In many cases these things crop up in ridings that the party in question has no hope of winning, which makes it even sillier. The national campaign might well have been better off running no one.

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Former prime minister Justin Trudeau was perhaps the most famous vetting failure, admitting in 2019 that he hadn’t told the Liberals’ green-light committee about his blackface capers. (It’s actually a fascinating counterfactual scenario: Trudeau did not get along with then party leader Stéphane Dion, who thwarted Trudeau’s ambitions to run in the riding of Outremont by hand-picking a different candidate. Had Trudeau disclosed his penchant for minstrelsy, or had it been discovered, he very well might not have been allowed to run in Papineau — which he won in 2008 by less than three points. Canada’s last decade might have looked rather different.)