ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — An estimated 33,500 people will choose the next leader of the Liberal Party of Newfoundland and Labrador and 14th premier of the province.
The party held a conference call Wednesday afternoon to clarify the vetting process for sorting through the two voting lists submitted to the leadership election committee by each campaign — those of Andrew Furey and John Abbott — on June 28. While there are currently more than 33,000 eligible voters, over 1,000 voters were disqualified.
Judy Morrow, past-president of the Liberal party and a member of the election committee, says the reasons for disqualification are numerous, from being too young to having died between registering to vote and the current date, but of the over 1,000 disqualifications, 300 were due to not supporting the party.
“The individuals who we recommended to the (chief returning officer) to be disqualified or ineligible were those who responded clearly no to the aims and objectives (of the Liberal party). There were three choices in that question: they could have said yes they support the aims and objectives, no they don’t support the aims and objectives, or they weren’t sure if they supported the aims and objectives,” said Morrow.
“We only found ineligible voters that clearly said no. Secondly, in the last question of dealing with political parties, if they responded that they would support any other political party, including the Progressive Conservatives, the NDP or any other party, they were found to be ineligible.”
Mainstreet Research was contracted by the party to do robo-calls on behalf of the party to help with the vetting process.
The reason for disqualification were from being too young to having died between registering to vote and the current date, but of the over 1,000 disqualifications, 300 were due to not supporting the Liberal party.
In addition to vetting via robo-call, Morrow says, the party went through public statements by voters attempting to register to weed out anyone who has made public statements against the party.
“Anybody that made any kind of public announcement or anything of that nature that clearly showed they didn’t support the party, that was also taken into account,” said Morrow.
“It was very few. The vast majority of that 300 — probably 99 per cent — came from the result of the robo-calls and the live calls that we did from both here and from the research company that we retained.”
An internal appeals process is in place for any people who were disqualified but feel they should be able to vote. Campaigns are able to appeal decisions on behalf of disqualified voters, as well.
“We’re hoping to have a final list to go to our vendor who is overseeing all the voting and conducting the voting on our behalf by July 14,” said Morrow.
Voting begins on July 28 and will conclude on Aug. 3. The virtual annual general meeting where the successful candidate is announced will take place on Aug. 3 and 4.
Morrow says the full list of eligible voters, which campaign signed the person up and a detailed accounting of why ineligible voters were rejected will not be publicly released.
@DavidMaherNL
