Slipping in the Fix
That’s where it starts to get tricky, at least for anyone not intimately familiar with the minutiae of Liberal party rules. The maybe-sortas on the list weren’t officially listed as supporters for a particular candidate. But organizers for those candidates would - or should - have been aware of where each was likely to go, since they would have been tagged during the delegate selection process. Thus a well-organized campaign with ties to the provincial council would have been able to tweak the list in order to give “their” alternates an edge over the rest when promotion time came around.
According to the party insider who explained all this to Macleans.ca, the only well-organized team in this regard was Michael Ignatieff’s. His people made sure that those delegates leaning toward joining the Iggy Nation had a better shot at making it into the voting booth. macleans/chris shelly
As I suggested below (credentialing irregularities at Liberal Convention) this is not a big deal unless and until there is a systemic bias in favour of one candidate.
Chris suggests that the process favours the organized: well, yes. In chaos, the organized make out like bandits. The more interesting question is who set the chaos up?
In essence, by closing the door at 11:00AM the organizers of the convention chose an option which would systematically discriminate against the less organized campaigns. They had other options which they decided not to take.
Where there is a clear front runner his organization wants to get the credentialing and the voting done as quickly as possible so as to reduce the chance of delegate slippage and outright defection. Closing the doors as early as possible is part of the strategy. So is holding the voting while the candidates are speaking (and how weird is that?).
Written by jay on December 2nd, 2006 with
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