OTTAWA - A group trying to make a case for electoral reform by creating very long ballots is declaring victory in this week's election — even as critics accuse it of indulging in stunts that undermine democracy.
"It's been a success," said Mark Moutter, one of dozens of protest candidates who ran in the Ottawa riding of Carleton.
"I've never seen people looking more optimistically at electoral reform, ever."
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In 2017, the Trudeau government opted to not challenge an Alberta court ruling that said it was unconstitutional to require those running for a federal seat to first present a deposit — $1,000 at the time. The plaintiff in the case was Szuchewycz's brother Kieran.
The Longest Ballot Committee ran a campaign in a Montreal byelection last September under the direction of the leader of the satirical Rhinoceros Party. The ballot for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun had 91 names on it — 79 of them associated with the Longest Ballot Committee.
Last June, the results of a byelection in Toronto—St. Paul’s were held up for hours after 84 candidates signed up to run, including 77 linked to the Longest Ballot Committee.
Canada's elections chief took aim at the committee last November. Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault told a House of Commons committee that extremely long ballots delay the count and suggested that people should face penalties for signing multiple nomination papers.
Perrault said that the long ballots also pose problems for some people with disabilities and might require smaller font sizes, "further compounding accessibility challenges."
The large ballot in Monday's vote got noticed on social media and inspired conspiracy theories claiming that the effort had been funded by Poilievre's opponents.
The committee said it faced similar criticism from Liberal partisans when it ran multiple candidates in the 2023 Winnipeg South Centre byelection.
Moutter's group said it's trying to raise the profile of electoral reform because the project has seen no real progress in Parliament. He noted that ridings where counting took the longest were not targeted by his group.
If anything, Moutter argued, the lack of ranked ballots in general elections is what makes tight races hard to call. "The current system — which we're fighting back against — is what's prolonging the elections right now," he said.
Pammett took the opposite view, arguing that the voting systems electoral reform advocates consider more democratic tend to lead to much longer vote counts.
He said it's possible to change electoral systems through referendums, such as New Zealand's 1993 plebiscite.
But Pammett, who served on the Ontario Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform in 2006, said it takes years of concerted effort to build up sufficient public interest to even hold a referendum — like the British Columbia plebiscite in 2018 that recorded just 39 per cent support for a switch to proportional representation.
The public often needs a prominent example of the an electoral system failure — such as a popular party winning zero seats — to build up a critical mass of opinion in favour of electoral reform, he said.
Moutter said he ran in last fall's Montreal byelection — the first federal vote in which he was old enough to cast a ballot — after hearing about the Longest Ballot Committee's advocacy elsewhere.
"The ability to get involved for the first time ever, and actually getting to talk to people about electoral reform, was what pushed me," he said. "It's just something that I'm really passionate about, and I hope to improve democracy that way."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 30, 2025.
