Frustrated that so many party members haven’t been able to vote, Doug Ford wants the Ontario Progressive Conservatives to scrap electronic voting in favour of a paper ballot and extend the voting in their leadership race — due to end Friday — by another week.

Ford, one of four candidates in the race triggered by the resignation of former leader Patrick Brown, called for the paper ballot during a London stop Monday on a Southwestern Ontario swing where he vented about the party’s electronic voting system for a new leader.

There has been widespread confusion and complaints about the electronic process, he said.

“I’m frustrated as anything the way our party has handled this voting system,” Ford said earlier during a Sarnia stop. “I found out this morning over 100,000 (party) members have paid their $10, haven’t received their envelopes to vote yet, across the province.”

The former Toronto city councillor and failed 2014 mayoral candidate said his campaign team hasn’t been able to get answers from the party about his voting concerns.

“I just want a fair, democratic race,” Ford said.

“Right now, I’m very, very concerned with the situation.”

In London, where he made a brief appearance at the City Centre office towers, Ford said the PCs should scrap online voting, declaring it “a broken system.”

But the chairperson of the PCs’ leadership election organizing committee said the party doesn’t share Ford’s concerns.

“We have a high degree of confidence in the system,” Hartley Lefton said. “The system is very resilient.”

Switching to a paper ballot would require rewriting the rules for the race between Ford, former Oshawa-area MPP Christine Elliott, businesswoman and philanthropist Caroline Mulroney and political activist Tanya Granic Allen, whose campaign is focused on scrapping Ontario’s updated sex-education curriculum.

“The rules as passed by the executive do not contemplate a paper ballot,” Lefton said.

To one veteran Queen’s Park-watcher, the voting flap is just the kind of trouble he saw coming after Brown resigned in late January amid unproven sexual misconduct allegations, triggering the abbreviated leadership race with just three months to go before a provincial election.

“I was predicting weeks ago this thing would be a big mess. So far, it’s living up to expectations,” said Nelson Wiseman, a political scientist at the University of Toronto.

Voting for the new leader by card-carrying Tories began last Friday.

Over the weekend, registration to vote was extended a second time — until noon this Wednesday, after previously being extended until Monday from March 2.

The party also extended the voting deadline, from this Thursday at noon until this Friday.

The PCs are to announce their new leader Saturday.

The 10-riding London region looms large in the Tory leadership race, with seven of its 10 ridings held by the PCs — one-quarter of the party’s strength in the Ontario legislature.

Ed Allin, president of the PC riding association in Tory-held Sarnia-Lambton, said he’s also concerned about the voting system, adding he had trouble with it himself at first but was able to clear it up.

“I have some concerns, but my hope is that it will get resolved in a timely manner and everybody who wants to vote, will get a chance to vote,” he said.

Wiseman said there’s no way of knowing which candidate would benefit most from going back to a paper ballot, something that fell out of use when parties switched to one-member, one-vote elections of leaders from conventions with delegates.

He said he also agrees with interim PC Leader Vic Fedeli, who has said the party’s membership list is “rotten.”

“They said they were going to audit the list. They haven’t done that,” Wiseman said. “Who knows who’s most successful at manipulating the system?” he added.

Lefton wouldn’t give a number for the party’s membership, but conceded there have been delays in the voting which is why the deadlines were changed already.

“(The system is) working a bit more slowly than we expected. There were members who were delayed in receiving their verification information,” he said.

Each member gets a letter in the mail with a web address and a 12-digit code. They then verify their information and upload a piece of photo ID. Once verified, they get an email with instructions on voting the next day.

The deadline for verification is 8 p.m. Wednesday. The deadline for voting is noon Friday.

Adding to the voting hiccups, the bonds between leadership rivals Elliott and Ford — they often talk about how they’ve been friends and political allies for years — seemed to be fraying rapidly Monday.

Elliott’s campaign co-chair accused Ford of “erratic” and out-of-control behaviour, after the businessman claimed Elliott had forged a secret deal with former leader Brown to win over his supporters.

Ford had earlier blasted his long-time friend for alleged flip-flopping while a member of the legislature, and taking a supposed patronage job from Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne.

The spat underscores evidence the race has boiled down to a face-off between the pair, and between starkly different political styles.

A pollster tracking the race said the contest is so close, he couldn’t rule out a tie on the final ballot.

“I would almost not even rule out a flat tie,” said Quito Maggi, chief executive of Mainstreet Research.

“We’re really going to see some drama on the 10th,” he said.

Sarnia Observer

With files by Tom ­Blackwell, National Post