On May 7, 2017, thousands of members of the Ontario PC party crowded into Ancaster High School to choose a candidate for the new riding of Hamilton West-Ancaster-Dundas (HWAD).

There was a lot at stake. The public was increasingly disgruntled with Premier Kathleen Wynne, a Liberal. Everyone knew the Tories had a shot.

People entered clutching their IDs, eager to cast their vote. It was rowdy and impatient. People were pushing.

Candidate Jeff Peller said it was a "hostile and unsafe" environment.

"My wife was pushed. Our jaws were on the floor. We couldn't believe it."

But none of this effort in grassroots democracy actually mattered. The vote was rigged. A ballot box was stuffed. By the time the night was over, at least 85 fraudulent ballots were cast to get the desired outcome. It was so rotten, police say, that one of the supposed voters had died a week earlier.

Police say they don't know who did it. Unless someone whispers new information to them, they never will.

"Yes, I believe that fraud has taken place," said Insp. Dave Hennick of Hamilton Police Service. "But we're unable to tie that to any specific individual."

Police arrested two people over the course of the 18-month investigation and released them without charges. There was no way, Hennick said, to prove who was behind the falsified forms.

The case though, puts a spotlight on nomination meetings and their place in our democracy. This one was fixed. But is that really all that unusual?

***

For Tory voters in HWAD, the would-be candidates for the June 2018 election was a solid slate.

There was Ben Levitt, a 25-year-old staffer in MP David Sweet's office. There was Vikram Singh, a 31-year-old Dundas lawyer who's a partner at a downtown law firm. There was also Peller, an actor with ties to the Niagara wine industry, and Jobson Easow, an entrepreneur who's president of the Wraps on the Go corporation.

Ben Levitt called the May 2017 nomination meeting "a flawed process." He asked for a new nomination meeting to "clear the air," and won that one in April 2018. (Samantha Craggs/CBC)

Singh, for one, had been campaigning for months. His effort, court documents say, had started in October 2016. He amassed a team of loyal volunteers. That December, he hosted Patrick Brown, Ontario PC leader at the time, at a fundraising dinner at his family's home. They cut a cake together adorned with the Ontario logo. Brown, Singh claims, told him he'd make "a wonderful candidate."

At the May 7 meeting, there were seven regular voting tables set up, plus an eighth known as the credentials table. When there's a clerical error with the voting registry — someone's name is spelled wrong, for example — people are directed to the credentials table.

On this night, the credentials table was staffed by party president Rick Dykstra, executive director Bob Stanley and staffer Logan Bugeja. (Dykstra and Stanley are no longer in those roles.)

Singh court documents say midway through the night, he learned party officials were "not cooperating with our scrutineers." He went to the table, documents claim, and suggested they take five minutes and check all the forms.

Stanley, Singh claims, told him that wasn't necessary. They were putting the forms in a sealed box and sending them to the party lawyer. The duct tape didn't go all the way around the box, Singh said. Stanley told him they'd "run out of tape." Singh said one of his volunteers could go get more tape, and Stanley said no. (Stanley has never filed a reply to Singh's claim).

By the end of the night, the combined total of seven tables showed a Singh win. Singh got 513 votes, Levitt 426, Peller 316 and Easow 215.

Peter Graefe, a McMaster University associate professor of political science, says political parties are still largely private organizations. (Laura Clementson/CBC)

Levitt, however, had cleaned up at the credentials table. Of those ballots, 202 of 345 were for Levitt. Singh only had 78.

That was enough to win Levitt the nomination.

Hennick says all 85 fraudulent forms were from that table. He stops short of saying Singh was the rightful winner of the nomination. When asked the question, he answers with this:

"Based on the seven other ballot boxes, Vikram Singh would have won the nomination," he said. "But once you take into the account the credentials box, Ben Levitt was the winner."

​Whoever orchestrated the fraudulent vote — and Levitt, for the record, requested a redo himself — it seems likely they didn't take the persistence of Singh and Peller into account. Both complained first to the party and then to the courts.

Those court challenges unveiled documents that revealed that the party didn't really want Singh to win. Levitt, meanwhile, was seen as a safe harbour.

Jeff Peller issued a legal challenge too but eventually dropped it. (Jeff Peller campaign)

In an affidavit, Dykstra didn't say the vote was predetermined, which Singh and Peller had alleged. But he did say Singh "inspired mistrust" and didn't fit the demographic the party wanted for HWAD.

There was a sense, Dykstra said, that Singh "might not be a reliable team player."

Singh's family also had long-ago ties to a Sikh separatist group. Singh's father had been cleared of that decades earlier and maintained his innocence, but Dykstra's rebuttal suggests the party saw that as baggage.

​"Ben Levitt is essentially, based on current knowledge, a largely risk-free candidate whose candidacy is unlikely to detract from the provincial campaign," Dykstra said in the document.

More than that, Dykstra said the party could choose whatever candidate it wanted. It doesn't necessarily matter what happens at a nomination meeting.

"The nomination meeting is not determinative of who will ultimately be listed on the ballot as a PC party candidate in the general election."

Patrick Brown, former Ontario PC leader, is now mayor of Brampton. (CBC)

Eventually, Peller dropped his legal challenge. The Globe and Mail reported that senior PC officials discussed offering Peller $130,000 to not cooperate with the police investigation before a senior party member blocked that idea.

A deal was eventually arranged with Peller, the Globe and Mail reported, but the terms are not known.

Singh hung in there longer. He went to court to try to unveil a surreptitiously recorded conversation between himself and party brass, which a judicial panel rejected. At one point, the party successfully got a ruling that he had to pay them $180,000 in legal costs.

In January 2018, he dropped his court challenge with a joint party statement that read like a sigh.

"I acknowledge that the PC party's nomination rules and the Election Act (Ontario), when read together, give the leader of the PC party the authority to identify the candidates who may run under the PC party banner in a provincial election," the statement said.

Brown eventually resigned as party leader amid allegations of sexual misconduct, and is now mayor of Brampton. Dykstra resigned for a similar reason. Stanley was fired.

New PC leader Doug Ford called for a new nomination meeting in HWAD, and Levitt won again. This time, there was little drama. Attendees there said at the previous meeting, it had taken them as long as an hour to get to the front of the line. The second time, it took 10 minutes.

"I definitely believe I have the mandate to be the candidate now," Levitt said.

The second meeting, he said, was "a much better run."

***

Over the course of the investigation, police seized 1,800 ballots, all 345 credentials referral forms and 1,648 pages of email correspondence. They also interviewed nearly 150 witnesses, many of whom hadn't attended the meeting, but ballots had been cast in their name.

NDP candidate Sandy Shaw, the eventual HWAD winner, said there's still a "cloud of suspicion" over the nomination.

Hennick wouldn't say who cooperated and who didn't, only that police got "various levels of cooperation."

In the end, NDP candidate Sandy Shaw won the riding anyway. Shaw said Monday that knowing what happened at the PC nomination meeting doesn't clear the "cloud of suspicion."

The HWAD scandal, she said, was one of "nearly a dozen other Conservative nomination meetings about which fraud-related questions were raised; and questions still remain about Conservative involvement in the 407 data breach scandal, currently being investigated by the York Regional Police."

Nomination scandals have never been limited to the PC party. And parties can mostly get away with them, said Peter Graefe, a McMaster University political scientist.

Nomination meetings aren't subject to the Elections Ontario Act. They could, theoretically, have Elections Ontario oversight, Graefe said, but the cost would be so high that taxpayers would balk at it.

Political parties, he said, are largely private bodies. They have their own nomination rules. Their nomination meetings are private affairs. Don't like it? Don't be a member.

HWAD was an exceptional case, he said. But people already think politicians are corrupt.

Incidents like this, he said, just verify people's theory "that politicians have no shame."