Five things to know about how the Conservatives will choose a new leader

OTTAWA — Conservative party members have begun voting to select their new leader, with mail-in ballots now returning to a depot in Toronto ahead of the official vote count on Saturday.

Here are five things to know about the process.

1. There are 14 names on the ballot — including Kevin O’Leary, who dropped out too late  for his name to be removed. The party doesn’t expect many members to still vote for him, but if they do those votes will still be counted.

2) Voting is underway. Members must mail in their ballot by Friday, or can vote in person on Saturday either at the convention location or at one of the polling stations being set up across Canada. The party is opening mailed-in ballots to verify voters also submitted a copy of their ID and a signed declaration form along with their choices. But the votes won’t be actually be counted until Saturday.

3) There are 259,010 party members eligible to vote. But while it’s one vote per member, the winner isn’t chosen based on those totals. Instead, each of the 338 federal ridings in Canada are allocated 100 points. How many points each candidate gets is determined by what percentage of the vote they get in a given riding. To win, a candidate will need 16,901 points.

HERE'S WHAT TO KNOW

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4) It’s a ranked ballot. Party members can choose up to 10 people they’d like to see as leader, ranking them from first to last. But even if they only choose one, that ballot will still be counted. The votes are counted electronically, and the machines being used can process about 20 batches of 100 votes per hour.

5) Second choices matter. Ranked ballots are counted in rounds. If in the first round no candidate gets the majority, the person with the lowest number of points is removed from the ballot. Those who voted for that person will then have their ballots counted again, with their second choice being counted. The process continues until a winner is selected. The party expects to announce the winners of each round of balloting, until the overall winner is identified.

The Canadian Press