Waterfront Toronto is investigating “suspicious voting activity” in the online vote to name the $25-million Gardiner Expressway underpass revitalization.

A public engagement campaign yielded 884 suggested monikers for the transformation of a stretch of drab grey space into colourful outdoor “rooms,” potentially with a market, park space, art projects and more.

A jury of community builders, cultural leaders, volunteers and citizens narrowed the contenders to four — The Bentway, The Artery, The Canopy and Gathering Place — and launched a 10-day online vote to choose a winner.

The Bentway — “bent” is the architectural term for the concrete supports holding up the highway — was the clear leader for days — until the final hours of Sunday, when there was a surge of votes for The Artery before the contest closed at 11:59 p.m.

The website Monday shows those names tied at 34 per cent of the 3,500 votes cast, followed by The Canopy at 22 per cent and Gathering Place at 12 per cent.

By comparison, on Thursday afternoon “The Bentway” had 37 per cent, compared with 28 per cent for “The Artery,” 20 per cent for “The Canopy” and 15 per cent for “The Gathering Place.”

“As we were looking at the results coming in last night we noticed some suspicious voting activity that could possibly have been the result of automatic voting, which is prohibited under our ‘Reclaim the Name’ campaign rules,” Christopher McKinnon, Waterfront Toronto’s public engagement lead on the project, told the Star.

“All the voting needs to be manual,” he said, adding that individuals were allowed to vote online once per day.

“To ensure that the integrity of the process is intact, we're seeking to verify all of those votes and to verify that all the votes that were cast are legitimate. In the meantime we are showing the results as a tie.

“We're working with the naming team and our web people to verify each of those votes. It’s going to take us at least a couple of days to figure it out.”

McKinnon declined to release exact vote totals, saying only that it is “very close, too close to call.”

Speculation on Twitter that contest organizers were in any way responsible for the last-minute rush of votes is completely false, McKinnon said. “We are adhering to the public process we laid out.”

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The civic transformation project was announced last fall, triggered by an unprecedented $25-million donation to the city from philanthropists Judy and Wil Matthews.

The winning name in the online vote will go to city council, which will make the final decision. The project’s name and logo will be unveiled in June or July.

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