ANALYSIS: The nomination meetings are the problem

Let’s state at the outset that we don’t yet have any official indication as to whether the Scarborough Southwest Ontario Liberal nomination meeting earlier this month was run cleanly.

We do know that scrutineers for second-place finisher Nathaniel Erskine-Smith made some serious allegations after it was announced that Ahsanul Hafiz had won by 19 votes.

Let’s recap the big ones.

The number of people who were registered on site to vote didn’t match the number of ballots counted. When you lose by 19 votes and there are 34 votes unaccounted for, that’s an issue.

One Erskine-Smith scrutineer said at least half the people they encountered didn’t have proper identification. The voters claimed to have lost or forgotten their ID but were granted the right to vote anyway. Numerous voters are alleged to have presented Amazon orders, digital report cards, unsigned apartment leases, or a foreign visitor’s visa (not acceptable forms of ID), and yet were granted votes. (Hafiz’s campaign says that many of their supporters were denied the right to vote for lack of proper identification or registration.)

Numerous voters are said to have taken iPhone pictures of their ballots after they voted — a clear violation. (If a campaign […] This is an excerpt. Read the full article at TVO.org.