Former Liberal staffer Tim James has seized on a potential mystery vote or voter to launch a fresh challenge to North Shore MP Felicity Wilson's narrow preselection victory for the Sydney seat.
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Ms Wilson last month defeated Mr James by one vote in a razor tight battle to contest the seat in next year's state poll.
But Mr James claims the result is invalid because an unidentified person bypassed identification checks to get inside the preselection event, or someone in the room voted twice in the ballots.
Mr James' loss in November after a bitter preselection campaign prompted him to launch an 11th-hour appeal against the verdict through the Liberal Party's dispute resolution process.
The dispute panel rejected Mr James' appeal earlier this month. He last week applied for a further review on grounds the finding was "flawed and cannot be sustained".
Documents lodged in the appeal said it had been agreed in the dispute that all selectors and observers at the event showed photo identification and had been registered.
It was also agreed that "after the identification process, an unidentified person left the meeting, refusing to hand over his badge, which the staff member at the door did not see".
Mr James said the number of selectors voting "remained apparently unaltered from those tallied by division staff at the outset of the meeting", with 205 people present and 205 votes counted.
"[That] was despite the returning officer’s declaration after the person left that there were only 204 selectors remaining ... It is an uncontested fact that the number of observers remained apparently unaltered."
Mr James said it was an "inescapable conclusion that either an unidentified person was able to gain entry to the room, bypassing the identification process, or a selector or observer must have doubled up".
"As such it must be concluded that the chance of substitution 'was such as to justify setting aside the decision on the grounds that it is unsafe to allow the decision to stand'," he said.
He is seeking the panel's decision on the first appeal be set aside. He also wants the preselection result declared invalid and a second vote held before mid-February.
Mr James declined to comment.
The appeal was his final opportunity to stake his claim to the seat after he lost to Ms Wilson by six votes in an earlier preselection battle in 2017.
Ms Wilson was Premier Gladys Berejiklian's pick to contest the seat and is a member of the moderate faction, while Mr James is a representative of the party's hard right wing.
