Stone campaign admits canceling illegal memberships

VICTORIA (NEWS 1130) – BC Liberal leader hopeful Todd Stone‘s campaign has had to disqualify more than 1,300 memberships after the party’s auditors raised concerns about email addresses created by a hired data firm.

Campaign co-chair Peter Fassbender says data analytics firm AggregateIQ created email portals for 1,349 new, primarily non-English speaking members, to create email addresses, a move he admits could compromise the registration process.

“The issue here was something that the party clearly said to us was not done with any malicious intent or an effort to usurp the process. They realized what they had done was not in compliance and it was stopped immediately,” Fassbender said.

The Liberal party made the Stone campaign aware of the issue last Friday, according to Fassbender, and following a meeting with the rules committee, the invalid memberships were revoked.

“All of these were denied even before the voting process started,” he said.

Fassbender would not say whether his campaign is still working with AggregateIQ.

He says the party agreed with Stone that people with incomplete applications should not be allowed to cast a ballot before the Liberal party chooses its next leader on Saturday evening.

He says some membership applications by all six campaigns have been deemed incomplete because of the party’s rigorous verification process.

Privacy officials in Britain and BC are investigating how the company’s work Brexit’s Vote Leave campaign may have swayed the vote.

Liberal party spokesman David Wasyluk says the cutoff for membership signups was on Dec. 29 and over 14,000 audit calls were made to members to verify their contact information.

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