One Chilliwack family has learned firsthand how easy it is to join the BC Liberal party without even knowing it.
Rob Mills says that he opened his mailbox recently to discover BC Liberal membership cards made out in his name, as well as his wife's and his son's. He told CTV News he doesn't know who signed him up.
"If they signed us up, who else have they signed up that we don't know?" Mills said.
He called party headquarters to ask for his bogus membership to be cancelled, but staff members wouldn't tell him how he became a member in the first place.
Mills and his family aren't the first British Columbians to be unwittingly registered as BC Liberals.
Members of the Kamloops Blazers hockey team were signed up without their knowledge, and a volunteer's cat made it onto the membership list. Managers at a Kelowna restaurant even offered their employees free iPad to sign up new members.
Senior Liberal MLA Kevin Krueger is not impressed by the allegations of fraud in his party's membership drive.
"I'm not very happy about it," he said. "It's wrong .... I take democracy seriously and it really bugs me that people fool around with something so important."
Krueger says the Liberals shouldn't be running their own election.
"The idea of having Elections BC oversee processes -- I like that idea," he said.
But the proposal hasn't caught on.
"I don't think the public would support us using tax dollars to have supervision of a leadership campaign," Solicitor General Rich Coleman said.
The party says it's auditing memberships, but admits it won't be able to check all of the 50,000 new members to catch cheats. When the Liberals elect a new leader on Feb. 26, they'll cast their votes online, and no identification will be required.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Jon Woodward
