In attempting to give Monday’s federal byelection in Alberta the longest ballot in Canadian history, a group of electoral reform advocates may have instead created the shortest one — and with further policy changes possibly on the horizon, the future of such protests is unclear.
Elections Canada issued special write-in ballots — where voters simply fill in the name of their preferred candidate — after the group known as the Longest Ballot Committee organized over 200 candidates to run against Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in Battle River-Crowfoot.
Combined, the candidates affiliated with the group received just over 300 votes — 0.6 per cent of the ballots cast. More than 70 long-ballot candidates received no vote at all.
Despite the name of his group, organizer Tomas Szuchewycz doesn’t seem bothered that no long ballot was printed, or that his candidates earned only a fraction of the votes.
“Overall it’s been a really fantastic experience,” he told CBC News.
The Longest Ballot Committee has organized dozens of candidates to run in byelections over the past five years, forcing Elections Canada to adapt its rules to accommodate dozens of names on a single ballot.
Prior to Battle River-Crowfoot, the largest number of candidates the group had gotten on a ballot was 91, resulting in a metre-long document that caused counting delays and irritated some voters.
By using a write-in ballot, Szuchewycz said Canada’s elections body found a “great solution” in the face of his group’s efforts.
“Elections Canada showed that the ballot hysteria is a non-issue. There are other ways to solve the problem of large ballots than to try to prevent people from exercising their Charter rights,” he said. “[For us] it’s about getting the message out that our election rules need to be passed to an independent, non-partisan body.”
The Longest Ballot Committee wants a citizens’ assembly in charge of electoral reform, and says political parties are too reluctant to make government more representative of the electorate.
The group’s efforts have certainly caught the attention of politicians who are willing to make changes to Canada’s electoral system — but only to make it harder to organize long ballot protests.
Poilievre — who has twice run in a riding where the long-ballot candidates have organized, including his victory in Battle River-Crowfoot on Monday — is pushing for the government to bring in legislation that would prevent Szuchewycz and his group from running dozens of candidates in any one riding.
“We have to take action because this is a scam. It is unfair, it is unjust and it must stop,” Poilievre said on the campaign trail earlier this summer.
One of the suggestions Poilievre made is to change the rules around the number of signatures a candidate is required to gather to run — from the current 100 to 0.5 per cent of a riding’s population.
The Liberals say they are open to some changes. House leader Steve MacKinnon’s office has said the government “shares the concerns about the longest ballot initiative” and is “examining the issue.”
Jayson Cowan, a Battle River-Crowfoot candidate affiliated with the Longest Ballot Committee, said making it harder for candidates to gather signatures could prevent people like him from getting on the ballot.
Although the long ballot initiative has been framed as a protest, Cowan said that wasn’t the case for him. He argues there aren’t enough politicians who are Indigenous or from the disabled community.
A member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, Cowan previously tried to run as an Independent, but he struggled to gather enough signatures, in part due to mobility issues. He credits the Longest Ballot Committee for helping get his name on the ballot for the first time.
“I don’t know that I would have had that experience any other way,” he said.
Both Cowan and Szuchewycz cautioned that raising the bar regarding the number of signatures might also force smaller parties out of the picture.
Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault, the head of Elections Canada, offered his own suggestions on how to prevent long ballots in front of a House committee last fall.
The long ballot group is able to put forward so many candidates by having electors sign multiple candidates’ nomination forms.
Perrault argued that rather than raising the number of signatures a candidate is required to gather, “certain penalties” should be imposed on individuals who sign — or encourage others to sign — multiple nomination papers. He didn’t say what he thinks those penalties should be.
Despite indications of rule changes on the horizon, Szuchewycz said the group is garnering more interest from people seeking to run.
“We’ve been able to put out our message that politicians shouldn’t be in charge of their own election rules because it’s obviously a conflict of interest, and that message is really resonating with people,” he said.
Even though the committee has been able to recruit more candidates, it hasn’t necessarily translated into success on the ballot.
Last year in a Toronto byelection, long-ballot candidate Félix-Antoine Hamel achieved a first in Canadian electoral history by receiving zero votes in a contested riding.
While Hamel’s result was a novelty just a year ago, dozens more long-ballot candidates have laid a goose egg since — including 75 in Battle River-Crowfoot (although results there still need to be finalized).
Brian Wishart, one of the long-ballot candidates who received no votes, said he isn’t fixated on the result.
“For me, it’s about bringing attention to some of the flaws in our election system,” he told CBC News.
A resident of London, Ont., Wishart voted using a ranked ballot in the city’s 2018 mayoral election, but was dismayed when the Ontario government later scrapped the initiative.
“It was absolutely fantastic. It’s the best I’ve ever felt about voting in my life,” he said.
Cowan, who doesn’t live in Battle River-Crowfoot and was unable to vote for himself, received just one vote on Monday.
“I want to believe that I got through to somebody … [for] somebody who’s disabled, who can’t get around [to] get through to people, I think that’s fantastic,” Cowan said, adding that he would run again if the opportunity presents itself.
“I really do think that it’s an experience that everybody should have…. I want regular people giving it a shot. That would be amazing.”
Szuchewycz said the Long Ballot Committee intends to keep going in some capacity, but how will depend on what rule changes are pushed through Parliament.
“We’ll have to see what exactly the legislation is that they pass. Maybe it becomes impossible to do this, maybe it’s just slightly harder, or maybe it’s even easier. Who knows?” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
