Libs see dead people

Getting out the vote is a key to any candidates bid for his or her parties leadership, the more delegates you have on your ledger by the time the convention rolls around, the better it is for you when the voting comes. The key is to have them in place on voting day to put you over the top.

But what happens when your supporters have a forwarding address that’s a little hard to reach.

Liberal candidate Joe Volpe finds himself under the micro-scope again, after it was disclosed that his campaign workers have “recruited” a number of people for membership in the Liberal party, a couple of whom seem to be no longer among the living.

The Toronto Star conducted an investigative report into the chase for memberships and identified some 75 possible problems from the Quebec list. From that list they found that only a couple of dozens had actively sought out the Liberals and paid their own way into the club, some said they had not received phone calls, nor mail solicitations and hadn’t paid the fee nor signed anything. Yet they’re on the list, apparently ready to select a delegate to choose possibly the next Prime Minister of Canada.

This many months after the sponsorgate scandals, it seems there’s still a slight democratic deficit in the land of the Liberal. This could lay to waste all this penance that the party has done for the last few months since the Conservatives ended the long running Liberal show on the Hill. Not to mention hand the Conservatives and Bloc an issue that could help them quite nicely on any election trail.

You can rest assured now that a closer look will be made at all the other candidates and their membership lists, in a quest to see if things really have changed in Liberal land.

For Volpe, it’s the second major controversy to strike his bid for the leadership, early on in the campaign he ran into some trouble over donations of $108,000 from pharmaceutical executives, their spouses and families, including a couple of famous donations apparently made on behalf of 11 year old twins.

At the time it was considered an oversight by Volpe’s campaign team, who apparently weren’t paying particularly close attention to details. A situation that seems to have come back to haunt them once again. As they stand accused of improperly signing up new members to help put their guy in the leader’s chair.

Volpe is apparently set to address the issue on Monday, but with his campaign already in a bit of trouble, one wonders if not this might be an opportune time to take his bows and release his delegates and members (both living and dead). Otherwise it won't be long before some young smarmy web based mischief maker brings out another website for the dead, like the one for young fund raisers of a few months ago.

All in all, considering the interest in the souls of the departed, perhaps instead of a delegate count at the end of the convention on December 3rd, the Liberals could just pull out an Ouija board, or the Magic Eight ball to help them make the right and divine choice.