OTTAWA — Despite a frantic, last-minute push by the Liberal party to sign up voters for its leadership race, the party appears set to have fewer voters for its race than the NDP did last year.
And one of the party workers involved in the rush to sign up voters said senior party leaders are worried that the low numbers could "embarrass" the party and embarrass Justin Trudeau, widely believed to be the leading candidate.
QMI Agency has learned that 127,000 people are on the Liberal leadership voting list.
A Liberal party worker, who asked not to be named, said those voters — who could be either paid-up members of the party or simply those who declared themselves to be "supporters" — are spread across 95,000 households.
The party had boasted of signing up nearly 300,000 members and supporters who were then supposed to take the second step of registering to vote and obtaining a ballot. The Trudeau campaign said it had signed up 171,000 people on its own.
It appears, then, that less than half of those who signed up bothered to complete the second step to become eligible to vote.
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