Left is facing the challenge of securing voting while keeping the management race available

The problems that some registered liberals have with online vote in the party’s leadership race should not be a surprise and may even be a good thing, some experts say.

“You can’t have a broad open, hardly verified process for choosing prime minister in Canada,” Christopher Cochrane, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, told CBC News.

Cochrane points out that when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau won the liberal leadership in 2013, it was not only party members who threw their ballots. A new class of supporters could register to vote without paying a membership fee.

Cochrane said the system made sense when the Left was a third party in the lower house and they had to build their list of supporters. But today, the threat of foreign interference combined with the fact that the leadership competition chooses the next prime minister that the game has changed.

“It’s absurd to have a massively open, loose process and choose Canada’s prime minister. And the liberals about it,” Cochrane said.

Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, Commissioner for the public investigation of foreign interference, warned that party leadership was a vulnerability in her final report on 2019 and 2021 federal elections.

She issued a number of recommendations, including the need to verify the citizenship of a leadership voter or the status of permanent residence and apply the Canada Election Act to management competitions.

“It is likely that the improved security measures in this race are directly related to the foreign interference issues that have plagued Canadian elections over the past several years,” Chris Alcantara, a political science professor at Western University, told CBC News.

The complicated process

To vote in this race, registered liberals need to get an electronic voter -id and then check that ID online. They must then confirm their status as a qualified voter. Then they need to confirm their identity using the Canada Post Identity+ app or personally at a participating post office. Once done, members can give their online vote.

But dozens of people have now written to CBC News and say they have not been able to make the process work, especially when it comes to the mobile app and personal opportunity to verify their identity.

“In programming, every step you add, obviously creates a potential for a mistake, error or dysfunction, and it’s a multi -step, very complicated process,” Cochrane said.

Mark Carney, the front runner in the race, has joked about the process of various campaign events, but has adapted to the party on the issue of security.

“We take security seriously,” he told a quantity during a recent campaign stop. “We don’t want any chance of foreign interference in this choice.”

A spokesperson for the Liberal Party told CBC News that they could not comment on individuals who may have written to CBC News with complaints.

“This is actually the system that works. If you are unable to verify, there is a reason why you are unable to verify,” the spokesman said.

“We want to make sure we put on a process that is safe and fair.”

So far, more than 137,000 registered liberals have been verified to vote in the race, and 115,000 have cast their vote. The vote began February 26 at 1 p.m. 8 one and closes March 9 at. 15 et.

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Stewart Perst, a Teacher of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, said that Canadian political parties have the hard task of trying to hold a management choice that meets two related standards: preventing interference and not freeing voters.

“Politically, it is the more dangerous criticism that there are those who are not eligible to vote who participate in the election process,” Perst told CBC News.

“There is a sufficiently public good to ensure that political parties choose leaders reliably and in a way that is free of interference, but also maximizes the vote of the vote.”

Building a stronger process

These experts say that people will increasingly fight to use developing technologies and political parties have to make sure they are able to make sure they can make fair choices.

Perst said that parties may be more willing to criticize that their vote was too secure, and released some voters than to let unqualified people vote. But he claims that the position is not sustainable.

“The parties ultimately have to find ways to build leadership processes that either match choices Canada standards or are actually built in collaboration with elections Canada because it is the gold standard for the country,” he said.

Cochrane says the frustration that some registered liberal senses were inevitable, but the results of this race are likely to satisfy the party.

“As long as their Diehard supporters are those who come out and incur all these costs to vote for their candidate, they are likely to end up with the leader the base wants,” Cochrane said.