QUEEN'S PARK -- Progressive Conservative MPP Belinda Karahalios wants to create a new law that would ensure “transparency and integrity” in political party elections, as her husband battles the Ontario PC party about a 2018 race that he claims was “rigged.”
Jim Karahalios launched a $100,000 lawsuit in October claiming that operatives within the PC party manipulated a presidential race in an attempt to block him from winning.
The lawsuit alleges that election rules were breached and that ballot boxes were allegedly stuffed in order to elect his competitor, Brain Patterson, as party president.
The lawsuit claims that while there were 1,230 eligible voters registered to participate in the election, 1,345 were actually cast.
At the time Jim Karahalios’ claims were supported by his wife, a PC MPP, who told CTV Toronto Toronto exclusively that she agreed there were more ballots cast, than people registered to vote.
“This affects my husband, yes. But it’s not just him, not just one person. It’s democracy as a whole. If you start influencing or start trying to affect any type of voting process ... that’s not what democracy is about,” Belinda Karahalios told CTV News Toronto in October.
Today, Belinda Karahalios tabled a bill called “Ensuring Transparency and Integrity in Political Party Elections Act” designed to legislate fair and open races for those who want to run for party nominations, leadership races and executive roles.
The bill would make it mandatory for a party to provide voting data to Ontario’s Chief Electoral Officer within seven days of a party election.
If passed, parties would also be legally required to hand over key voting information – including the number of people eligible to vote, the number of votes cast, and the number of votes each candidate received.
The bill looks to make questionable party elections a provincial offence and allows for fines to be handed out to anyone who casts a ballot without being registered, and jail time for tabulators who record incorrect results.
“Any person responsible for counting the ballots for an election who willfully miscounts the ballots or otherwise willfully makes up a false statement of the poll is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable to a fine of not more than $25,000 or to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years less a day, or to both,” the proposed legislation reads.
While it’s unclear whether Belinda Karahalios’s bill will get support from her fellow caucus members in government, she has indicated that it is a non-partisan issue since the rules would affect all parties equally.
The PC party faced intense scrutiny, and in some cases police investigations, in 2018 over controversial candidate nomination races for the 2018 provincial election.
When Premier Doug Ford ran for party leader, he promised to clean up the troubled party nomination process.
“When I’m leader I’m going to make sure they’re transparent, people are held accountable and there’s going to be integrity here,” Ford said in 2018
Jim Karahalios’s lawsuit has not been tested in court.
In a statement to CTV News Toronto, party communications director Marcus Mattinson said the party “does not comment on ongoing legal matters.”
