Angry in the Great White North

Bob Rae wants an online leadership convention, seeing it as the only way to beat Michael Ignatieff, who has a stranglehold on caucus votes:

The proposal, which the Liberal party executive was poised to consider by conference call late Sunday, would give every party member a vote by a combination of phone and online ballots. The idea was being vigorously promoted by leadership contender Bob Rae.

However, frontrunner Michael Ignatieff's camp was arguing that the proposal would violate the party's constitution and that the May 2 vote to choose Dion's successor should go ahead as planned.

"Bob Rae is trying to find any formula that avoids us winning, even if it's unconstitutional," said one member of the Ignatieff camp.

In an interview Sunday afternoon, Rae said a consensus has emerged that the party must quickly find a permanent replacement for Dion before Parliament returns and is presented with a budget on Jan. 27. He said the party has an "obligation to provide the greatest stability going forward" into the new year.

But he said allowing caucus alone to decide the leadership would be elitist, undemocratic and illegitimate.

Yeah, whatever.  This coming from the guy who wants the government of the country selected by MPs only, and not by going back to the voters.  Bob Rae's hypocrisy aside, how much would such a scheme cost?  For the cost-conscious Liberal Party, the numbers are certainly tempting.

For an online voting scheme, Elexpert will sell you a licence for their software to run on your own server for $10,000.  A phone-voting system is probably comparable in price, though many of these companies selling online and by-phone voting systems don't advertise the prices on their websites.

Elections Canada is interested in these systems, but also cautious:

Security concerns associated with Internet-based voting relate to the link between the elector's computer and the Internet service provider. Once the two computers are linked, there is an increased possibility that computer "hackers" could reach and manipulate election results. The experts questioned were confident that security challenges would be surmountable, but not immediately.

The main challenges to telephone voting include system limitations, providing access for electors with disabilities, electors whose language is not English or French, electors with rotary dial telephones who could not take advantage of this option, and the issuance of PINs to electors.

I doubt Elections Canada would have much to say if the Liberal Party went with Bob Rae's idea, but it might get involved if Liberals complained that there votes weren't properly counted.

Of course, there is the upfront cost of organizing this scheme.  The Liberal Party would have to download their membership lists and provide them to the online/phone voting service, then distribute logins and PINs to Liberals ahead of the vote.  That might be difficult since the Liberals don't maintain a centralized membership list:

Meanwhile, the federal Liberals have also been under criticism since the last federal election for failing to come up with a national membership list which the Conservatives and other national parties use to raise funds. The federal Liberals have provincial and territorial wings with their own membership lists.

A senior Liberal told The Hill Times that one of the key reasons why Liberals have been unsuccessful in raising enough funds is because there has been a serious lack of coordination among the party's fundraisers.

"For all the Chretien years and the Martin years, part of the challenge for fundraisers was they never had access to all the information that would have made them more effective. Everyone was sensitive about their lists-bagmen didn't want to share their lists, the fundraisers didn't want to share their lists with non-fundraisers and non-fundraisers therefore didn't want to share their membership lists. If you're not updating your data on a regular basis, you're using old data and when you're raising funds, you're sending letters to people who are deceased, people who have moved, multiple letters in some cases because you haven't merged the information," said the Liberal.

The source said the key reason why the provincial wings don't share their lists with party headquarters is because they were afraid the party headquarters would compete with them to raise funds.

This lack of coordination is annoying when it comes to fundraising, but could be fatal for voting, since serious and widespread errors in the voting lists would put the legitimacy of the vote in question.  It's likely that many Liberals would be issued multiple voting accounts because their names are on multiple lists.

Vote early.  Vote often.

It also gives Michael Ignatieff a way to spike Bob Rae's plan.  If just one provincial wing could be convinced to withhold their list, the online/phone voting scheme would be scuttled.  A provincial or territorial wing of the party packed with Ignatieff loyalists might be convinced to play the role of spoiler.

I have a feeling Bob Rae's plan is going nowhere, even though price-wise, it seems like a good idea (I'll let Liberals argue over whether the plan is consistent with the party's constitution).  And that means Bob Rae and his people are going to be furious if Michael Ignatieff strolls effortlessly into the job of Liberal Party leader, especially if Ignatieff's people succeed in wrecking Bob Rae's plan.