What went wrong with the Liberals’ verification system and what does it mean for the future?

During a campaign stop in Calgary two weeks ago, Mark Carney acknowledged there had been a cost to his party’s efforts to guard against foreign interference during the race that made him the new Liberal Leader.

A reporter had asked him what he would do to stave off foreign meddling in nomination and leadership contests. He cited the “rigorous process” the party had used this spring in choosing a leader. “Fewer people would have voted than otherwise would have happened, but that was a price in that case worth paying,” he said.

As Canadians focus on next week’s federal election, there has been little time to draw lessons from the Liberal leadership contest.

While Mr. Carney garnered 85.9 per cent of the leadership ballots, only about 38 per cent of registered Liberals voted. Turnout was roughly on par with the 35 per cent who participated in the contest that chose Justin Trudeau as party leader in 2013.

A Liberal official who spoke to The Globe and Mail last March mentioned several possible factors for the turnout, such as tighter eligibility criteria, the short campaign and general participation patterns. But the party hasn’t said how many legitimate members were unable to vote because of the tighter controls, or whether it had intercepted fraudulent attempts to cast ballots. (The Globe agreed not to identify the official, who was not authorized to discuss internal party matters.)

For those left on the outside, questions remain about whether the party struck the right balance between verification and participation, a challenge parties will continue to face because of concerns about foreign interference.

Martin Belanger was one of many registered Liberals who had trouble with the phone app the party used to verify identities. It wouldn’t upload his passport scan. “I never got resolution and never voted,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, the party failed me.”

After Mr. Trudeau announced on Jan. 6 that he would step down as prime minister and Liberal leader, the party’s national board decided the vote for a new leader would conclude March 9.

The need to safeguard the process was top of mind. Allegations about intrusions into Canadian politics by China and other hostile states prompted Mr. Trudeau in 2023 to name Justice Marie-Josée Hogue to chair a public inquiry. Her final report noted that leadership contests can be vulnerable to foreign interference but added that political parties are private entities that control their own decision-making process.

In early February, the Liberals announced that they had picked Canada Post’s Identity+ phone app to verify members’ identities. The app would scan IDs, take users’ photos and confirm credentials so they could get a barcode to be able to vote. Members could also be verified at a post office.

Jamie Carroll, a former national director for the Liberal Party, had concerns. He said that, the day Mr. Trudeau resigned, he wrote to the board to suggest using the Interac verification service. He thought the Canada Post set-up was too cumbersome and voiced his opinions with the party and in an interview with The Globe.

By the end of February, the Liberals boasted that hundreds of thousands of new members had signed up. Unlike other parties, they encouraged participation by not charging membership fees, so they had a large number of people to verify.

It soon became apparent that many struggled with the app. On Feb. 28, the party posted videos to help members navigate it. That same day, at a meet-and-greet in Barrie, Ont., Mr. Carney fielded a complaint about the process from a supporter.

The Globe spoke to 28 Liberals who had problems with the verification process, 12 of whom were unable to vote.

Linda Gruson tried in vain for days to vote. The app wouldn’t recognize her passport and barcodes wouldn’t work. “They’re turning away committed members and that’s not a good thing for the party,” she said.

Jane Beaumont couldn’t vote because the system repeatedly rejected her barcodes. “If it had been a close vote,” she told The Globe, “I would have been very cross.”

Eva Nichols couldn’t cast a ballot either. “The process prevented many elderly from participating, thus disenfranchising many lifelong Liberals. So, now I belong to no political party,” the 86-year-old said.

Liberal spokesperson Mohammad Hussain said that the party wanted to secure the contest from foreign interference, and the vote “played out properly to ensure a robust, secure and fair leadership race.”

He said that most problems stemmed from addresses or names not perfectly matching party records, “similar to taking a flight – if your boarding pass doesn’t match your ID, you can’t get on the plane.”

The app relies on documents with consistent information, Canada Post spokesperson Lisa Liu said. “If the system received inconsistent documents, they weren’t verified.”

Parties typically struggle when they turn to electronic systems to give every member a vote in internal contests, said Trent University political scientist Cristine de Clercy. “The problem always is the technology. I don’t really think there exists a perfect process by which parties can allow … a very, very wide swath of Canadians to select the party leader in a glitch-free, barrier-free method.”

Mr. Carroll said other systems could have been used for the leadership race. “I sincerely hope that the party is undertaking a post-mortem to understand what worked and what didn’t.”

With a report from Bill Curry in Ottawa