The Member for Gasp�-Cimeti�re

It begins again....

A list of newly recruited Conservative members in Quebec contains discrepancies, including clusters of memberships at single addresses and blocks of members in sparsely populated areas of the Gasp�. The discrepancies in the confidential list ... are prompting fear among senior party members of the kind of vote-buying scandal that plagued the Canadian Alliance's leadership campaign in 2000 in the same region. The list, which appears to be incomplete, includes members recruited by all three membership camps and, in some cases, features identical telephone numbers for multiple memberships.

Phony members in Quebec. Barricaded, misdirected, and disallowed members in Hamilton. Possible mass purchases of memberships with drug money in B.C. Hordes of instant members, members who are not citizens, members who are children, or elderly drunks, or dead: just about everywhere. Every party. Every level of government. Has it occurred to anyone else that, among all the other reforms whose necessity the past few weeks have highlighted, we have got to change this corrupt, undemocratic, embarrassing system of choosing nominees/party leaders? Do you ever hear about anything like this going on, with such regularity, in the States? Or Britain? Or any modern democracy? UPDATE: File this one under "chutzpah".