Nominations 101

The Liberal nomination procedure can be grouped into three main components: the Nomination Plan, Memberships and the Nomination Meeting. The following overview presents a simple, plain-language version of the nomination procedure.

The Nomination Plan

The formal nomination procedure begins when the “Panel,” a committee of three people, meets and adopts the Nomination Plan for the riding. The Nomination Plan contains nomination process details such as the date, time and location of the nomination meeting.

Memberships

To be eligible to vote for a candidate a person must be a member of the Ontario Liberal Party. Any resident of Ontario over the age of 14 and not belonging to another Provincial Party is entitled to join the Party. Memberships can be obtained by signing a completed membership form and by paying the membership fee. The “Cut Off,” the deadline for obtaining memberships, appears in the Nomination Plan.

To obtain a membership, click here

The Nomination Meeting

The Nomination Meeting consists of two parts—the formal meeting and the voting. At the formal meeting each candidate is nominated and seconded prior to delivering their nomination speech. Once the speeches finish, the meeting is adjourned and the voting begins.

If there are only two candidates, ballots are simply marked with an “X” to indicate the chosen candidate. If there are three or more candidates, a “preferential ballot” is used. Voters can rank the candidates in order of preference, and their lower-ranked choices are counted if their first choice candidate is eliminated.

Once the ballots are counted the winner is announced and invited to give a victory speech.