Next month’s byelection in Alberta’s Battle River-Crowfoot will break the record for the most candidates on a federal ballot in Canadian history.
As of Friday, 102 candidates â mostly associated with a group of electoral reform advocates known as the Longest Ballot Committee â have registered to run for the seat.
The byelection was called after its recently re-elected MP, Damien Kurek, resigned to allow Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre to run for a new seat in the House of Commons. Poilievre lost in his longtime riding of Carleton in April.
The Longest Ballot Committee has been organizing dozens of candidates to run in byelections in recent years, resulting in metre-long ballots that have caused delays in vote counting and confounded some voters.
The group wants to put a citizens’ assembly in charge of electoral reform and says political parties are too reluctant to make the government more representative of the electorate.
The previous record of 91 candidates occurred twice in the past year: during a byelection in LaSalle-Emard-Verdun last September and Carleton during the general election this past spring.
The Longest Ballot Committee says it is aiming to sign up 200 candidates in Battle River-Crowfoot. The deadline to register as a candidate is July 28.
Poilievre and other candidates who aren’t associated with the Longest Ballot Committee have criticized the protest.
Poilievre said during a town hall meeting in the riding last week that he wanted election rules to be changed to prevent more long ballot protests.
“”We have to take action because this is a scam. It is unfair, it is unjust and it must stop,” Poilievre said.
Although Elections Canada enforces the Canada Elections Act, Parliament is responsible for making any changes.
The Longest Ballot Committee rebuked Poilievre’s suggestion, arguing that it emphasized their point about politicians being in charge of election laws.
“When it comes to election law, politicians just have too much skin in the game to be calling the shots. There is a clear and inappropriate conflict of interest,” the group said in a statement earlier this week.
Bonnie Critchley â who is running as an independent and pitching herself as an alternative to the Conservative leader, who she argues pushed Kurek out â has also called on the Longest Ballot Committee to back off.
Independent candidate says Poilievre’s byelection win isn’t guaranteed
In an open letter to the committee posted on her campaign website, Critchley said there is a “backlash” in the riding from voters who are worried that she is a “fake out” candidate.
“I don’t have a massive team, I don’t have backing from millions of people. I have to go door to door within my community and explain to my neighbours that I have nothing to do with you,” she wrote.
Michael Harris, who is running for the Libertarian Party, called the protest a “mockery of the democratic process.”
“This flood of joke candidates doesn’t just waste voters’ time. It actively hurts serious Independent and third-party candidates who are working hard to give this riding real alternatives,” Harris said in a statement.
Although this is the second time the Longest Ballot Committee has organized in a riding Poilievre is running in, they have also targeted Liberal strongholds. The Conservatives flipped the riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s during a byelection last summer that featured dozens of candidates associated with the long ballot protest. (The Liberals won the seat back in the general election).
