TORONTO - It's going to be a very close finish when the ballots are counted and Ontario's Progressive Conservatives pick a new leader, candidate Frank Klees predicted Friday.

Klees, who placed third behind John Tory and Jim Flaherty in the party's 2004 leadership race, dismissed suggestions that the winner would be Tim Hudak, who is backed by many federal MPs and provincial Conservatives, including former premier Mike Harris.

"I anticipate that this is going to be a very, very close count," Klees said. "Guaranteed, it's not going to be a coronation."

Christine Elliott, who was first elected in a 2006 byelection, was considered one of the front-runners in the race to replace Tory, who resigned in March after failing to get a seat in the legislature.

Another relative newcomer to Queen's Park, Randy Hillier, who was first elected in 2007, admits he's the dark horse in the contest to become leader of the Opposition.

More than 40,000 party members were eligible to vote during provincewide balloting last Sunday and Thursday, using ballots that allowed them to select second and third preferences for leader.

The candidate in last place will be dropped, and the second choice selections of that candidate's ballots will be divided up among the other contenders until someone gets more than 50 per cent.

The marked ballots were transferred Friday to Markham, the site of the leadership convention, where scrutineers for the candidates and party officials were to be locked away -- after being forced to surrender their cell phones and Blackberrys -- to count the votes.

The leadership contest took a slightly bizarre turn Friday when former NDP premier Bob Rae -- now a Liberal MP -- turned up at the legislature to condemn Hudak and Hillier for proposing to scrap Ontario's Human Rights Commission and tribunals.

"I find it passing strange that many of my federal colleagues would be endorsing candidates who've taken it upon themselves the specific mission to end the work of the Human Rights Commission," Rae said.

"This is an act that defies the best traditions of the Progressive Conservative Party, and also raises questions at the federal level about the federal (government's) commitment to the work of the federal Human Rights Commission."

The Tories said they didn't need any lessons in how to protect rights from a "failed premier."

"I reject the notion, as Mr. Rae suggests, that Ontarians are not fair-minded," said Lisa MacLeod, the youngest member of the legislature and a Hudak supporter.

Elliott and Klees have both warned the party that abolishing the Human Rights Commission would give the Liberals an easy target in the 2011 Ontario election and make it easier for Dalton McGuinty to win a third Liberal majority.

Political scientists said Hudak and Hillier are looking for winning policies that would return the Tories to the heady days of Harris's Common Sense Revolution in the 1990s.

"I think obviously Mr. Hudak and Mr. Hillier are hoping to return to those glory days, if you like, of conservatism and to defeat the naysayers with a victory at the polls," said Paul Nesbitt-Larking, chairman of political science at Huron University College.

"There is a sense among those people and their supporters that this kind of robust return to the roots of the Harris years is going to be what brings about success in the polls in Ontario."

Bryan Evans, politics professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, said there aren't fundamental differences between any of the candidates, and dismisses suggestions that Elliott, who constantly talks about compassionate conservatism, is a Red Tory.

"When she's calling for a freeze on the minimum wage, when she puts issues like that to the fore, talking about smaller government, or more deregulation -- this is not a Red Tory," said Evans.

"This is not a centrist. It's the conviction politics of the Common Sense Revolution again."