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Photo by Errol McGihon / Postmedia

In an interview Saturday before the results were known, Collard said she sent the forms to party headquarters in Toronto but delivered the membership fees to the Liberal party riding office in Ottawa-Vanier.

“I assume that the person in the riding office, having worked there for many years, would know where the money should be going,” she said.

Collard said she had been following the same process since the beginning of the nomination campaign. “Nobody said, ‘Oh, by the way, where’s the money?’ “

Collard said she wasn’t notified that there was a problem until she received an email “in the middle of the night” after the Oct. 11 deadline had passed.

“This is a technicality that shouldn’t take people’s rights away. It’s unacceptable, not only because it affects me as a candidate. It affects all those people’s democratic right to vote. That is what is really making me upset.”

Jennifer Cavanagh was one of the disenfranchised Collard voters. She showed up at the nomination meeting with a copy of her membership form in hand, but was turned away because her name wasn’t on the voting list.

“I think it’s disgraceful,” said Cavanagh, who signed up as a member because Collard appealed to her as a candidate. “I feel very strongly that every person has a vote and that’s how democracy works.”

Lisa Stillborn, the party’s vice-president for Eastern Ontario, said the rule is that the nomination forms and the membership money “have to travel together.” Responsibility rests with the candidates and their teams to ensure that happens, she said.