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“It shows the organization of the headquarters, so it definitely is concerning for the next election,” she told the Post.

Royle contacted headquarters about the issue, but is still waiting for an answer. “Quicker responses would also be nice,” she said.

On Wednesday, a party spokesperson said nearly 600 voters have received two ballots. The party is still reviewing another 1,000 membership entries that could be duplicates, meaning there could be a maximum of another 500 people who were mailed an extra ballot.

Despite the error, no member will be able to vote twice, the spokesperson said. The party will have a complete list of duplicates, and will accept only the first ballot from each person who received two.

“… we’ve scoured the list and found a limited number of duplicates — fewer than 0.5 per cent of the 124,000 members — and we’re contacting each of them to ensure they can vote, but they will only be able to vote once,” said NDP national director Robert Fox in a statement to the Post. “The safeguards in place for this election are the strongest we’ve ever had.”

There are a few ways people could end up on the official membership list twice. Unlike the other major parties, the federal and provincial NDP share membership lists, so members might appear twice on the master list if they signed up both provincially and federally with slightly different information. The party spokesperson also said national headquarters was flooded with calls from people who weren’t sure if their memberships had lapsed in the days before the Aug. 17 membership deadline. Because of the time crunch, staff just told them to sign up again to be safe, which could have produced more duplicates.