Canada’s chief electoral officer says it’s time to review running rules after an increased voter turnout delayed the announcement of by-election results for the second time this year.
The names of 91 candidates appeared on the ballot papers for Monday’s by-election in Montreal’s LaSalle-Emard-Verdun constituency.
Special ballots roughly one meter long had to be printed to accommodate all the names. The size of the ballots delayed vote counting, and the final results were not announced until after 2:45 a.m. ET on Tuesday.
Stephane Perrault, president of Elections Canada, told a committee of senators on Tuesday that the length of the ballot paper also creates accessibility issues for voters.
“This situation is starting to cause accessibility problems for voters with visual impairments and other accessibility problems, so I think the rules need to be reviewed,” Perrault said in French.
The LaSalle-Emard-Verdun by-election was the second by-election this year with an extremely long ballot paper. 84 candidates appeared on the ballot for the Toronto-St. Paul by-election in June, but the final results of that election were not announced until 4:30 a.m. ET the following day.
Most of the candidates in LaSalle-Emard-Verdun and Toronto-St. Paul were connected to a pro-electoral reform group called the Committee for the Longest Ballot, which wants electoral reform left to citizens’ assemblies and argues that political parties are too reluctant to make governments more representative of their voters.
“We can safely say our campaign was a success because it was a lot of fun and sparked important conversations about our shared democracy,” organizers said in a statement on Tuesday.
Election rules required candidates to pay a $1,000 deposit to run for office. This requirement was amended by It was abolished in 2017 as unconstitutional. When the judge found that this conduct violated section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees an individual’s right to run for public office and take part in elections.
Donald Bourgeois, lawyer and author of this book Canadian Elections Act, He said legal arguments could be made in court that the deposit requirement should be reinstated, given the recent lengthy voting campaign.
“the purpose [of the advocacy candidates] “It’s not about winning an election, it’s about changing the electoral process,” Bourgeois told CBC News.
Many states still require test-takers to pay a deposit.
Perot said Tuesday that removing the $1,000 requirement was a “good thing,” but suggested there are other rules that could be tightened, particularly around signatures and authorized agents.
To run in a federal or by-election election, candidates must collect at least 100 signatures from voters who live in the electoral district they wish to run in. A spokesperson for Elections Canada told CBC News that multiple candidates’ nomination forms contained “a significant number of duplicate names and signatures.”
Candidates must also appoint an “official agent” to act as their representative and manage their campaign finances. All of the candidates who appeared on the longest ballot had the same official agent.
Asked about Perot’s proposal, Bourgeois said administrative changes regarding signatures and authorized agents “might slow down a few people.” He said dedicated supporters might still have a way to get their name on the ballot.
“I don’t think it’s effective, but the elections chief knows his job better than I do,” he said.
Perrault said he plans to raise some of these issues in the House of Commons, which is considering Bill C-65, a bill to amend the Electoral Act. The bill passed second reading in the House of Commons in June and is expected to be considered by the House of Commons Procedure Committee.
The candidate with the longest voting committee received a total of just over 1,100 votes in the LaSalle-Emard-Verdun constituency. The difference between the winner and the runner-up was just over 600 votes.
Two of the candidates on the longest ballot papers received zero votes, making them the second and third candidates in federal election history to do so. He failed to get a single vote in the contested constituency..
