A longtime member of the BC Liberal Party is going to court to halt the party’s leadership contest until a full membership audit is done amid allegations of voting irregularities and “outright fraud.”
Vikram Bajwa, a party member since 2004, filed a petition in BC Supreme Court on February 1, naming party president Cameron Stolz, chief returning officer Stacy Robertson, Roxanne Helme, Colin Hansen, Derek Lew, Sarah Sidhu, Don Silversides and Jackie Tegert, all members of the party’s Leadership Election Organizing Committee, as respondents.
Bajwa’s petition seeks several declarations related to alleged breaches of the party’s constitution by the leadership committee. He claims the committee failed “to act in an entirely neutral fashion in all respects in relation to the Leadership Vote and in the administration of the Leadership Vote.” Bajwa wants the court to delay the announcement of the leadership results – set for Feb. 5 – until the party provides members with information about its membership audit, including the number of memberships scrubbed from the party’s rolls and the reasons for disallowing the memberships. In addition, Bajwa wants the party to reveal its “conclusions as to whether any coordinated voter fraud took place in the leadership race.”
In a phone interview Tuesday afternoon, Bajwa told BIV that his ultimate goal is to make the leadership election process and the party more transparent to both party members and the media. He said that around 3,000 names had been disallowed, but he believes the number of ineligible voters registered during the race is closer to double that number.
“I’m just a member, and a majority of the members are very concerned that we cannot allow non-citizens and non-residents to vote in the Liberal leadership even though it is, by constitution, not specified,” Bajwa said. “We want the LEOC to be more transparent, how they found out that those were ineligible voters, where they were from, and if there was any campaign manager behind their enrolment. All these questions which we want the LEOC to, you know, make it more public to the media and to the members.”
During the pandemic, Bajwa said the party went into a period of “introspection” and it became clear that allegations of voter fraud in the leadership race raised serious concerns from a wide range of members all over the province.
“Non-residents should not be allowed to vote in the leadership contest because they cannot vote in the provincial election, period,” he said. He wasn’t comfortable revealing whom he was supporting for party leader, but said he was inclined toward sitting MLAs in the race such as Michael Lee, Renee Merrifield and Ellis Ross.
Bajwa’s petition claims he and other party members will be “irreparably harmed if the leadership vote is not delayed” until results of the full membership audit are released.
“If the leadership vote is permitted to proceed, and the winner announced, and then the membership audit is completed and released, there is a significant possibility that the Party will be brought into disrepute,” the petition states. “If the completed audit shows significant instances of voter fraud or other irregularities, the Party would be left with a leader whose legitimacy would be questioned by Party members.”
Bajwa’s petition warns that this would not only risk “significant acrimony” between leadership campaigns and members, but also undermine the “public’s faith in the democratic process.”
Should his efforts in court be unsuccessful later this week, Bajwa said such a result could spur efforts to get ElectionsBC involved in party leadership campaigns to ensure more fair and transparent votes, and “awaken” not only the BC Liberals, but also the NDP and Greens.
“Most of the leadership contestants, they appreciate what we are doing right now and so do the members,” Bajwa said. “We are becoming more vocal, and we demand more answers and we want the party to be more transparent.”
The petition’s factual basis has yet to be tested in court and the BC Liberal Party did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
