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The party’s leadership-vote organizing committee declared that the plans won’t change in an email just before midnight Wednesday, which is the time you make announcements when everything’s going well.

“We are aware of calls from some candidates for an extension to the race. This is, in our view, not only a fundamental change in the rules at a late time in the campaign, but also contrary to our party’s constitution, which provides that in this case the vote must conclude no later than March 9,” they wrote.

The Tories’ hastily organized leadership race followed the midnight resignation of ex-leader Patrick Brown six weeks ago. Within a week, despite dissidents arguing that the logistics were just too daunting (including interim leader Vic Fedeli, who wanted the top job for keeps), the party’s executive called the lickety-split campaign and set the date of the big reveal for this Saturday, March 10.

A bunch of other deadlines were set to match, including a cut-off of Feb. 16 for new members to be eligible to vote — according to party rules, the cut-off can’t be earlier than halfway through the official campaign, which Feb. 16 precisely was.

Apparently as of Wednesday night 70,000 Tories had gotten as far as proving their eligibility to vote and 44,000 had voted.

“More members will have voted in this leadership than voted in the 2002 Leadership, when the PC Party of Ontario was in government,” the organizing committee said.

Mind you, the party claims about 190,000 members, so three-quarters of them hadn’t cast their ballots as of Wednesday night.

The Tories are in a bind. Sticking with a plan that’s turned out to be flawed will look stubborn and will make a lot of members mad. Changing the plan will look like admitting incompetence and will make a lot of members mad. Neither would be a great outcome for a party aiming to show that it’s ready to march forward after a tough couple of months.

dreevely@postmedia.com

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