A partial explanation

Dwain Lingenfelter has released a statement on his campaign's questioned membership lists. And while the Lingenfelter campaign is rightly (if inevitably) accepting responsibility for the issue, there are a few points worth noting which appear to add to what we knew about the race so far.

First off, there's Lingenfelter's mention that his campaign has processed a total of "more than 6000 memberships" during the course of the leadership campaign. Interestingly, that looks to largely answer my question as to just how many new memberships had come through each campaign - and it to the extent it's correct, it would signal that Lingenfelter could take credit for a majority of the new members signed up during the campaign so far.

Mind you, that margin figures to be substantially reduced if the challenged memberships from Meadow Lake are taken out of the mix. In that respect, it seems fairly striking that nearly a fifth of Lingenfelter's new members would come from a single volunteer focusing on only part of a riding. And indeed, there's some quesetion as to why his campaign wouldn't have had some significant follow-up questions about that kind of influx - especially when it was being asked to foot the bill.

Which brings us to Lingenfelter's statement as to how it came to pay for the memberships:

In the weeks before the membership deadline, one of our many northern volunteers was asked to oversee membership renewals, and applications for membership, among people on First Nations in the Meadow Lake constituency. In the week prior to the membership deadline we received 11-hundred membership applications from these First Nations. Our northern volunteer told us that in most cases, these new members would not be able to afford the cost of a Party Membership.

Our Party Constitution and our Leadership Contest Rules do not limit or restrict helping those in need, who wish to become part of the democratic process. We wanted people from these First Nations to have an opportunity to participate, and our campaign decided to cover the cost of these applications.

Even leaving aside the issues I raised in my earlier post as well as the question of the sheer numbers involved, it's still worth raising the question of why Lingenfelter's campaign would have seen its role as involving paying for all of the members on the list.

After all, Lingenfelter's own account suggests that not all of the listed names could be linked to any difficulty paying for a membership (though of course we know now that there was little if any followup to confirm the information on the face of the applications). And it's worth wondering how many more of Lingenfelter's new memberships were similarly added to the party rolls based on Link's willingness to pay to bring new votes for himself into the fold - and if so what that might say for the likelihood that his new recruits are willing to take any personal stake in the future of Saskatchewan's NDP.