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The Conservative party has backtracked from a gag order it placed on voters who attend Stephen Harper’s campaign events, but it is sticking to a controversial practice that requires them to obtain advance clearance if they want to show up for many of those events.

The practice, in which Canadians who want to see Harper must be vetted by the party and receive a bar-coded ticket bearing their name, has drawn criticism.

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Questions only intensified when ipolitics.ca revealed over the weekend that ticket holders also were required to promise they would not transmit or aid in the transmission of “any description, account, picture or reproduction of the event.”

On Monday, Conservative party spokesman Kory Teneycke told the Citizen that the requirement was a “legal boilerplate” that some lawyer “cribbed” for the ticket’s disclaimer – but that ultimately meant nothing.

“We’ve removed it,” he said of the disclaimer. “It was never intended. It was never enforced.