Canada’s leading government watchdog is raising concerns about the integrity of the New Democratic Party’s leadership race, warning the party’s internal voting rules could leave the contest vulnerable to fraud and foreign interference.
In a public statement, Democracy Watch urged the NDP to implement voter verification measures before members select their new leader on March 29.
“Only citizens who are 18 years or older can vote [in general elections], so that should be the standard across the board,” said Duff Conacher, Democracy Watch’s co-founder.
In Canada, political parties run their own leadership races, and these are subject to limited oversight. The NDP’s rules allow non-citizens to vote in its leadership races.
The party also repeatedly declined to clarify with Canadian Affairs whether it has any measures to verify voters’ identity.
That gap, Conacher says, creates vulnerabilities.
“If you were a foreign government or a foreign entity … wanting to [exert] influence, when you see that the NDP has no voter verification system, you’d say, ‘Wow, we could actually influence federal politics significantly.’”
Targeting youth
The NDP’s provincial and territorial sections oversee party membership, and each sets their own eligibility requirements.
Under those current rules, the minimum age for party membership — and therefore voting eligibility in the leadership race — ranges from 12 to 14.
Party members can vote one of three ways: online, by telephone or through mail-in ballots, using a ranked ballot system.
Lucy Watson, the NDP’s national director, defended the party’s rules in a written statement to Canadian Affairs, saying they reflect internal decisions aimed at expanding participation.
“[Provincial and territorial membership] rules are long-standing and democratically established within the Party,” she said.
She added that youth engagement has long been a defining feature of the party’s organizing model.
“We are proud to engage young people in our movement, and youth participation has been a core part of the NDP for decades.”
Watson said the party has retained Data on the Spot to run their voting process. The agency is a Canadian vote counting firm that has administered previous NDP leadership contests.
“Unique voting credentials are issued to verified members, and established safeguards are in place to protect the integrity of the vote, including tracking IP addresses, phone numbers used in telephone voting, and voting timestamps,” Watson said.
Canadian Affairs repeatedly contacted Data on the Spot to ask whether the firm independently verifies the identity of voters. The company did not provide a response.
Canadian Affairs also repeatedly asked a media spokesperson for the NDP to clarify whether the party requires voters to produce any government-issued identification to vote. The spokesperson declined to comment.
Both the federal Conservatives and Liberals required government-issued identification to vote in their most recent leadership elections.
Accountability issues
Conacher says his core concern is how little oversight exists for internal party contests in Canada.
“Leadership and nomination contests are almost entirely regulated internally by the parties themselves,” he said.
While Elections Canada regulates campaign spending and donations in leadership races, it does not oversee voter eligibility or voting mechanics.
That matters because leadership contests can have major political consequences, says Conacher, noting Mark Carney became prime minister after winning the Liberal Party’s 2025 leadership race, but without having ever run in a general election.
Conacher also worries that a lack of identity checks enables foreign actors to mobilize non-citizens to participate in internal party votes.
“[The lack of verification processes] leaves it wide open to some foreign agent recruiting a bunch of international students,” he said, referencing intelligence reports that suggest China recruited international students in the Greater Toronto Area riding of Don Valley North during the 2019 federal election.
A January 2025 report commissioned by the federal government outlines evidence Chinese foreign officials bussed international students to a Liberal riding nomination event in advance of the 2019 federal election and provided them with falsified documents to allow them to vote.
“There were allegations that the students were told by [People’s Republic of China] officials in Canada to support Mr. Dong if they wanted to maintain their student visas. Mr. Dong denies any involvement in these matters,” the report says.
‘Working within the system’
At a March 5 campaign event in Ottawa, NDP leadership frontrunner Avi Lewis told Canadian Affairs that he is aware of the Democracy Watch statement, but that questions about the integrity of the race are better left to the party itself.
“It’s really important that we have an electronic counting system and voting system that we can rely on,” said Lewis. “But I don’t have anything to do with making that system or making those decisions.
“So we’re working within the system that we’ve got for the leadership and trying to win it.”
Canadian Affairs also repeatedly sought comment from NDP leadership candidate Heather McPherson about the integrity of the NDP’s voting rules, but did not receive a response.
The party’s rules state that the leadership race will run for no more than 21 days before concluding at the party’s Winnipeg convention, which runs from March 27 to 29.
For Conacher, the opacity of the NDP’s selection process raises serious questions about how Canada regulates internal party contests that can determine who governs the country.
“To say, ‘Oh well, that’s just a private club choosing its leader and therefore we shouldn’t regulate that contest — I mean, it’s just ludicrous,” he said.
*With files from Meagan Gillmore
