We don’t know exactly how many members of the New Democratic Party had their votes in their party’s leadership election on Saturday nullified, as did the victims in the robocalls scandal in last year’s federal election.
We do know that some New Democrats were either deprived of their right to vote or discouraged from exercising it by long delays in voting that resulted from an external cyber-attack on the party’s computers.
When even a single voter has his or her vote nullified, it’s one too many, and it affects the results of the election.
In this case, enough such votes went uncast and uncounted that the campaign manager for candidate Nathan Cullen said it was “a huge problem for our campaign.”
Anyway, Cullen’s campaign didn’t challenge his elimination on the third ballot, and the NDP pretends that the election was entirely legitimate.
So Thomas Mulcair, who had a comfortable lead in the votes that were actually cast and counted on all four ballots in the election, is the new leader of the NDP.
And among the losers on Saturday were the sovereignists in this province.
As I wrote for Saturday’s Gazette, Mulcair is no Jack Layton. Even to voters in his home province, he lacks the appeal of his late predecessor in last year’s election.
But he has far more appeal than any of the other leadership candidates, all of whom remained virtually unknown in Quebec at the end of a campaign that attracted little interest in this province. As far as Quebec voters are concerned, he was the only candidate in the race.
So initially, at least, his leadership will allow the NDP to present a strong federalist alternative to the sovereignist Bloc Québécois.
It will enable the NDP to challenge the Bloc for the support of Quebecers dissatisfied with the Harper government.
And it will give the NDP its best chance to recover support it has lost to the Bloc since Layton’s death last August, and to salvage seats that it won in its historic breakthrough last year.
Less than 10 per cent of the NDP members eligible to vote in the leadership election were from Quebec. So Mulcair, the Quebec candidate, was elected mainly by rank-and-file New Democrats from English Canada.
By electing Mulcair, the only candidate based in this province and the one most fluent in French, they told French Quebec that they do not take their party’s gains here last year for granted.
And they have deprived the sovereignists of the opportunity to interpret a defeat of Mulcair at the hands of an English-Canadian, and possibly one whose French is less than fluent, as a rejection of Quebec.
Their only possible consolation prize was handed to them by Brian Topp, Mulcair’s bitter rival. Topp refused to concede defeat even when it was all but assured after the third round.
Instead, with little hope of winning, Topp spitefully stayed on the ballot to give party members an opportunity to cast an anybody-but-Mulcair protest vote against its next leader.
So the sovereignists might attempt to spin the 43 per cent for Topp against Mulcair on the final, two-candidate ballot as a vote against a Quebecer and, therefore, against Quebec.
But such an argument would contain several flaws. One is that Topp himself is a native of Quebec who is almost as fluent in French as Mulcair. Another is that the NDP’s nationalist-friendly policies on Quebec and language went unquestioned by any of its leadership candidates.
And a third, and the one that matters most, is that it was Quebec’s candidate who won.
dmacpherson@montrealgazette.com
Twitter: @MacphersonGaz