History of politics as mob rule

The Conservative party leadership campaign (yeah, that's still on) now faces a request for criminal investigation of one of the leading campaigns. Timely note: one of the charges concerns the stealing of access to Zoom meetings

It's striking how unsurprising this news seems.  The wild-west atmosphere of Canadian leadership contests lends itself to corruption.

• New rules and processes conjured up by interested parties for each new race. 
• The buying and selling of votes ("memberships"), a corrupt act in most other kinds of politics, being the basis of the whole contest. 
• The central roles of  professional "organizers," for whom the rewards of being associated with a winning contest are substantial.

The whole thing is a kind of mob rule, where whichever faction can round up the largest mob, by any means necessary, wins.  It's nice to see one of these things condemned to meaningless and obscurity by the pandemic. But dull as it may be, one of the factions will reap the spoils in the end.  And all the talk of criminal investigations will be swept under the rug.