Elections Canada said the count in the Toronto-St. Paul by-election, in which the Liberal Party lost a party stronghold, was progressing slowly but smoothly despite the challenges of administering an 84-candidate field.
“The ballots themselves were larger than usual, which caused some steps to take longer than usual,” Elections Canada spokesman Matthew McKenna told CBC News in an email. “Multiple steps caused multiple delays overnight.”
McKenna said the longer ballots would take longer to unfold and count, and that extra drop boxes would be needed given the size of the ballots themselves.
“The vote counting and reporting process was done manually in the presence of candidate representatives, vote counting continued through the night and all results were published online,” McKenna said.
“While we always do our best to release election results as soon as possible after polls close, maintaining the integrity and transparency of the vote count remains our number one priority.”
The unusually long list of candidates on the ballot is the result of a group of proponents of electoral reform called the “Longest Vote Committee.”
The group’s spokesman, Sebastian Colaino, a leader of the Sai party, said the longest-running voting committee helped 77 candidates, including Colaino, get on the ballot.
Candidates who took part in the Longest Vote Committee protest included candidates from the Rhinoceros, Marxism-Leninism and Marijuana parties, as well as all independent and unaffiliated candidates except for Corey DeVille, Colaino said.
The Longest Term Committee’s Electoral Reform candidate slate received a total of 1,068 votes out of the 36,962 votes cast. This is nine more than the Green Party candidate who received 1,059 votes, and significantly more than the 234 votes received by the People’s Party of Canada candidate.
None of the longest-voting candidates received more than 97 votes, and one candidate who apparently did not even vote for himself received zero votes.
Conservative Don Stewart won with 15,555 votes. Liberal Leslie Church came in second with 14,965 votes, 590 votes behind.
“Next time there will be 184 candidates.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised in the 2015 federal election that it would be the last election to use single-member districts, but backtracked on that promise after coming to power.
Glenn MacDonald, who received 42 votes as an independent candidate in the Toronto-St. Paul by-election, told CBC News that many of the people who voted for him and other independents would have voted for the Liberal Party, but are upset that Trudeau has backtracked on his promise to reform the electoral system.
“If he had moved on electoral reform, I would have actually voted for Justin Trudeau and encouraged others to do the same, and that would have made a difference,” MacDonald said.
MacDonald said the group has not yet decided how it will approach the upcoming federal election, but will evaluate the results of its campaign in the Toronto-St. Paul electoral district before making a decision.
“The purpose of the longest vote is to show that our voting system is screwed. And if that message hasn’t gotten across yet, next time instead of 84 candidates, there will be 184 candidates,” he said.
Elections Canada said it would “evaluate the conduct of the by-election over time,” as it would any other election, and prepare a report.
