The B.C. Liberal Party is crossing its fingers extra help manning phone lines for longer will be enough to ensure thousands of delegates can vote for a new leader today.
The party's four leadership candidates met with party officials Friday to figure out what to do about the vote after concerns were expressed members were still missing their personal identification numbers (PINs) needed to cast a ballot.
All the camps were reassured after that meeting that more operators on the Intelivote phones and an earlier start time when they will be answering 5 a.m. today will get PINs to Liberal faithful.
"It's pretty easy now to get a PIN if you were to phone," said Norman Stowe, campaign manager for Kevin Falcon, the candidate who first raised concerns thousands of rural and northern B.C. Liberals were PINless. "It's been made sure no one is disenfranchised and everyone can vote Saturday."
The stakes of today's poll could not be higher.
The winner of the leadership race will be premier of the province. Premier Gordon Campbell announced last November he was stepping down half through his third term.
Falcon encouraged the party to add staff to an existing 1-888-281-8683 help line, where members without a PIN can get answers or a new PIN.
The party did add personnel, and one senior northern campaigner, who helped people get PINs Friday, said there were no delays in getting through the phone lines.
Still, some candidates had raised the possibility of extending the vote past Saturday, including Falcon.
"Thousands of people potentially might be disenfranchised from voting and we can't allow that to happen. It wouldn't be fair," Falcon told CTV News.
Christy Clark's campaign also raised concerns Friday.
"We are working with the B.C. Liberal Party to ensure all voters have the opportunity to cast their ballots in Saturday's leadership election," Sharon White, the chair of Clark's campaign, said in a statement.
"Voters across the province are planning to participate and we need to make sure they are not disenfranchised."
George Abbott pointed out many people in northern areas receive their mail only twice a week.
"I hope that in no way is the legitimacy and the integrity of the vote going to be undermined by the PIN number issue," Abbott said.
Candidate Mike de Jong said his campaign is phoning supporters to make sure they know what to do to get their special code to vote.
"We hope all our party members will take a couple of minutes to get that PIN after they check today's mail delivery," he said in an email.
Nova Scotia-based Intelivote Systems was contracted to handle the vote for the B.C. Liberal Party.
Company president Dean Smith said the first 53,000 PINs were mailed out Wednesday, and the remaining batch of about 37,000 was sent out Thursday.
There was no problem with the first mail-out, but some people had not received their PINs from the second mailout.
Smith was at a loss to explain why the PINs were not in the hands of all the party members by Friday. "It's a bit of a mystery," said Smith.
He said there appeared to be no pattern to those who had not received their PINs he knew of some in the Victoria area, and others in the Peace River region in northeast B.C.
Smith said another issue is that it is not possible to pinpoint exactly how many party members had not received PINs yet.
To help people get PINs, Intelivote added another two dozen people to handle calls on the 1-800 number. Staffers at the B.C. Liberal Party headquarters were also taking calls.
Canada Post spokeswoman Colleen Frick said the mailouts started arriving through Ottawa starting last week.
But she said the documents were still arriving this week.
"I know they searched the Vancouver plant [Thursday] night and they still found product, and it just recently arrived in Vancouver. So we know that some of that stuff didn't all get inducted as early as [last Thursday]."
Frick said all of that mail was meant for the Lower Mainland and went out Friday.
"I got the plant director to scour the floor of the Vancouver plant [Thursday] and the only items that he found were local ones."
Smith said his company has expanded the call centre and he urged anyone who didn't have a security code to call into the centre until 5 p.m. Saturday. With Canadian Press/CKNW
