Elections Canada says it is taking steps for the upcoming Montreal by-election to avoid a repeat of the hours-long vote count delays in Toronto this summer.
A total of 91 candidates are running in the LaSalle-Emard-Verdun by-election on Sept. 16, making it the longest election in Canadian federal election history.
“Elections Canada recognizes the importance of providing results in a timely manner on election night,” the commission said in a statement.
“Due to the unusual situation of the large number of candidates in the LaSalle-Emard-Verdun constituency, we have carried out simulations to determine how best to adapt the procedure to avoid unnecessary delays.”
The previous record was set in June when 84 candidates ran in the Toronto-St. Paul election. Ballots nearly a metre in size hindered vote-counting, and the final results were not announced until 4:30 a.m. the following day.
“The ballots themselves were larger than usual, which caused some steps to take longer than usual,” a spokesperson for Elections Canada told CBC News at the time. “Multiple steps experienced multiple delays overnight.”
As in the June by-election, most of the candidates in LaSalle-Emard-Verdun are linked to the Committee for the Longest Vote, a group that protests Canada’s single-seat constituency system. The group wants a citizens’ assembly to take charge of electoral reform, saying political parties are too reluctant to create governments that better reflect the diverse views of the electorate.
Sébastien “Corino” Corriveau, an organizer of the protest and leader of the satirical party Psy, hopes the campaign will raise awareness about electoral reform and proportional representation.
“This is a stupid way to do it,” he told The Canadian Press, “but we’ve tried other ways before and they all failed.”
Corriveau said he isn’t seeking to influence the outcome of the election in any way, but that what his group is advocating is worth the inconvenience to voters.
“The system is rigged and the rules are made by the winners,” he said.
Elections Canada will need to make some temporary changes to the Elections Act to accommodate the number of candidates. The act would require the head of Elections Canada to Making short-term changes In the event of an “emergency, unusual or unexpected situation.”
The Toronto-St. Paul ballot had two columns of candidates instead of the traditional single column, and the dots for voters to mark their support were on both the left and right margins of the ballot (the Electoral Code requires that the dots must always be to the right of the candidate’s name).
Lori Turnbull, a political science professor at Dalhousie University, said the law goes far enough to give Elections Canada flexibility to deal with an overabundance of ballots in by-elections.
“Plan a little bit in advance. [one byelection]”But if this were to happen on a larger scale, it would be a completely different story. But that’s not going to happen, because I don’t think this campaign has the organizational strength to win 343 constituencies with 100 candidates,” she said.
Turnbull said Elections Canada will likely be able to provide results more quickly in the LaSalle-Emard-Verdun constituency, drawing on its experience from the June by-election, but cautioned it could still take longer than usual.
“There’s only so much you can do because you’re looking at the ballots with the names on them to make sure they haven’t been tampered with, so you can’t just find one X and be done with it. You have to look at them all,” she said.
More than 70 candidates calling for electoral reform garnered a slow march of votes, winning 1,068 votes in a dramatic Toronto by-election. Glenn MacDonald, a volunteer with the Longest Ballot Committee who ran as an independent candidate, appears on Power & Politics to discuss whether last night’s election was a victory for his group and its cause.
Corriveau said members of his group went door to door asking for signatures to put candidates on the ballot, and one in two people they asked signed.
“The voting system is not a day-to-day concern for anyone in Canada right now, but people agree that the system needs to change,” he said.
Despite breaking voting records in Toronto and now Montreal, Turnbull suggested the longest-running get-out-the-vote campaign may not have gained enough momentum to create the change the group hopes for.
“It’s just annoying. It’s annoying to Elections Canada more than anybody. It’s annoying to the candidates and the people around the candidates who are anxiously awaiting the results,” she said.
“There is no risk that this will change the rules of how an election is won or that it will split the vote or take votes away from any candidate.”
Advance voting for LaSalle-Emard-Verdun is set to begin on Friday.
