CALGARY—Alberta’s election commissioner has been asked to investigate allegations of “mass” electoral fraud in the NDP nomination race for Calgary-North East last December.

A scrutineer representing the campaign of losing nominee hopeful, Roop Rai, filed a letter with the commissioner’s office complaining people who live outside the riding used fake documents and addresses to cast ballots in the Dec. 16 contest.

Inderpreet Singh Gill said Alberta NDP officials ignored or dismissed concerns he and others raised about possible fraudulent activity in the days leading up to the vote. Rai lost the race to Gurbachan Brar, a realtor and former broadcaster for RedFM 106.7, by nearly 200 votes.

“Winning and losing isn’t the point,” Gill said in an interview. “The point is there should have been a fair fight.”

“It’s not sour grapes for us,” he said. “We’re not asking that (the party) makes us the bloody winner and disqualifies (Brar). We’re asking for an investigation so in the future we don’t have all this nonsense going on.”

In his complaint, Gill maintains people living outside the riding falsified their address of residence “by themselves and/or with the help of campaign members/candidates,” including at least two members who used forged documents as proof of their eligibility to vote.

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Gill said one resident in the riding is willing to testify that 15 people on the membership list registered using his home address but do not live there and has filed a complaint with the Calgary Police Service.

“Many of the fraudulent members are situated in legitimate houses of friends and family who willingly cover for the fraud,” Gill wrote in his complaint.

He also asked the commissioner to investigate “foreign influence” on Alberta’s political process, pointing to rules allowing international students to vote in nomination races.

When contacted by StarMetro, Brar denied any knowledge of wrongdoing during or leading up to the vote, adding losing candidates can lodge complaints about anything.

“Nothing happened like that,” he said, referring to allegations of fraudulent voting. “Everything was good, and it was nicely done by the party.”

In an email, Roari Richardson, provincial secretary for the Alberta NDP, said provincial rules allow party members to vote in a nomination race provided they show one piece of government-issued identification with their name, photo and current address, or two pieces of authorized identification with their name and current address, such as a bank statement or a property tax assessment notice.

“We followed scrupulous identification requirements that are in line with the standards set out by Elections Alberta,” said Richardson, who was not made available for an interview.

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In a Dec. 23 email to Rai, Sandra Houston, the NDP’s nomination chair, said she looked into “three specific names” provided to her and would share the report to the party president but that she is “not in a position to take action on any process affecting these individuals.”

Further, Houston wrote, “the outcome of the vote would not be affected by these ballots given the difference of 178 votes between your vote total and that of Mr. Brar.”

Rai, who worked as a constituency assistant for Calgary-McCall NDP MLA Irfan Sabir and who was the party’s candidate in the Calgary-Greenway byelection in 2016, declined to be interviewed for this story.

In a statement to StarMetro, she expressed her disappointment with the electoral process and party officials’ seeming indifference to the concerns raised by her campaign and party members in the riding.

“The rules that govern these contests are so lax that they can easily be manipulated, and that’s a direct threat to our Canadian way of life,” Rai wrote.

“We want to be able to raise our families here in Canada in a democracy that’s built on a principled foundation of fairness, equality, and transparency,” Rai wrote. “But that won’t happen if the political leadership and the concerned authorities choose not to investigate and address legitimate concerns in the electoral process.”

A petition that began circulating Dec. 30, 2018, has garnered roughly 150 signatories urging the election commissioner and the RCMP to launch an investigation into the nomination contest immediately.

“It’s disheartening that the leadership of Alberta NDP has chosen to turn a blind eye to potentially corrupt practices in the Dec. 16 nomination contest,” reads the petition, which notes the signatories have resigned as members and supporters of the party.

Gill said he and other NDP members are not satisfied with the party’s response and he worries voter apathy will grow if the matter isn’t thoroughly investigated and stricter rules put in place to deter fraudulent voting.

“I am totally dissatisfied, disheartened and disillusioned with the whole system and I don’t want to participate anymore,” he said.

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