Democracies outside of the US: How do parties choose their nominees?

[Northern_Piper]

@Measure_for_Measure

What are the requirements for being a signed up party member? What sort of people do that kind of thing?

Here’s a couple of posts I made a while ago in another thread:

@Northern_Piper

The rules for membership and voting will depend on the party, but usually, parties view nominations as an opportunity to drive up memberships, so the rules are generally pretty open to new members signing up shortly before the [nomination] meeting.

My understanding is that a member just has to live in the riding and pay the membership fee, and then show up to vote at the nomination meeting. In hotly contested nominations, each candidate’s organisation will be extremely active in signing up members. That’s not a bad proxy for their campaigning ability. It’s very much retail politics.

If a particular candidate is very successful in signing up a lot of new members, even at the last minute, and the new members all turn up and vote at the meeting, there’s not much the riding association can do about it. I imagine they would have a credentials sign-in spot, where each person who wants to vote had to show ID, proof of membership and proof of residency in the riding (but I’ve never personally participated in one, so I’m just relying on recollections of news coverage).

There’s sometimes allegations that a candidate who doesn’t have previous strong ties to a riding has signed up large numbers of “instant” members who have no real ties to the party but only to the candidate.

Perhaps the closest analogue in US politics is the caucus system, but on a smaller scale?

@Northern_Piper

Just skimmed the web-pages for the parties on how much their fees are. The Liberals charge $10 a year, the Tories charge $25, and the NDP charge $25 (if you’re in Ontario; their fee varies from province to province, so I picked Ontario as the largest province).

Liberals FAQ page has a fair bit of information: https://www.liberal.ca/membership/

Tories and NDP are more bare-bones:

https://donate.conservative.ca/membership

https://secure.ndp.ca/membership_e.php

Unlike the Australian Labor example given by Giles, I don’t think there is any mandatory requirement to attend meetings of the local association. However, if you don’t show up very often, odds are you won’t be very influential in the local association, which is one of the reasons people join it.

As to who joins, usually the answer is the same as Giles’ answer: people who are generally committed to the party’s positions and want to see them elected, and are willing to donate time and money to achieve that goal. Some may join because they have ambitions to stand for election themselves some day, so they are earning chits by becoming a party stalwart.

Generally speaking, at a minimum these are the types of people who will cut a cheque for the party, or knock on doors, or stuff envelopes, etc., because they support the party’s platform and goals.