Disruptive ‘scam' or legitimate protest? Here's why Pierre Poilievre's byelection ballot will have dozens of candidates

Hamilton Spectator

a day ago

OTTAWA—One candidate is a 22-year-old university student living four hours north of Toronto.
Another is a Montreal-area teacher and tour guide with a fondness for dinosaurs.
A third lives in Nebraska, working in IT.
And there are more than 175 people, just like them, on the ballot for a byelection in a sprawling riding sandwiched between Calgary and Edmonton.
Battle River—Crowfoot is the Alberta riding vacated by Conservative MP Damien Kurek so his seatless leader, Pierre Poilievre, can run in a byelection and return to the House of Commons. It's also the sixth target for the Longest Ballot Committee, a protest group that swamps ballots with dozens of independent candidates to drum up attention about electoral reform.
The idea is simple: when voters notice the colossal lists of contenders on their ballots, candidates and organizers use that opening to promote alternative electoral systems and their belief that politicians should not be in charge of shaping election rules that may benefit them.
This week, the Conservative leader, whose former riding of Carleton was targeted during the last federal campaign, said he'd had enough.
Poilievre
penned a letter
to Government House Leader Steven MacKinnon, calling the effort a 'blatant abuse' of Canada's democracy and elections integrity, and demanded the Liberals introduce reforms in the fall that would stifle 'the longest ballot scam.'
In a statement to the Star, MacKinnon's office said the government shares Poilievre's concerns and was 'examining' the issue.
But for those who believe the gargantuan ballots make an inexcusable mockery of Canada's electoral system, well, that's kind of the whole point.
'I get emails, I get Facebook messages saying, 'Why is a person from Ontario running in an Alberta riding?' And this is exactly why I do want to see a residency requirement. I don't think somebody from Ontario should be able to run in Alberta,' said Dillon Anderson, the 22-year-old university student from Callander, Ont.
'I'm hoping that this is the last time we'll do the longest ballot and that we get some changes, some actual meaningful changes, that don't restrict Canadians' rights to run, but gives us more of a local-focused approach,' said Anderson, who is one of several protest candidates who believe other rules, like residency requirements, ought to be changed.
For Nicola Zoghbi, the Montreal teacher, the initiative is 'one of the most efficient ways' to point out flaws in Canada's electoral system, which he says include its use of the first-past-the-post system, where the candidate with the most votes wins — even if most voters actually voted for other contenders.
What's unique about this byelection, said Zoghbi, whose campaign platform is
almost entirely about dinosaurs
, is how Poilievre is able to take advantage of some rules while trying to ban others.
'There's this loophole that Poilievre and other politicians are using, so regular people like me could use it, too,' he said of the residency requirement, which politicians have historically used to run in ridings far away from where they actually live.
Jason Buzzell, the Nebraska IT expert, joined the movement in part because of his personal ties to the riding.
Buzzell was raised in Battle River—Crowfoot, and started his family there before work took him across the border.
He wonders if a proportional voting system would have seen Poilievre re-elected in Carleton last spring.
'If we had had electoral reform … we wouldn't even have to do this byelection,' Buzzell suggested.
The question election experts are now wrestling with is whether the whole scheme is fair game, or whether the integrity of races is being compromised.
There are indications that the latter has not occurred, said Dennis Pilon, a professor and chair of the politics department at York University.
One is a lack of reports that electors have felt too confused by affected ballots to vote properly. Another is no indication that the number of spoiled ballots has unduly increased. A third is that voters ultimately still have the agency to choose the candidate who they want to represent them.
But if the strategy isn't harming voters, could it harm candidates from established parties?
'Maybe it ends up denying one of the candidates the win. That's the whole point of the protest,' said Pilon. So far, all ridings targeted by the movement have been won by a Liberal, Conservative or Bloc Québécois candidate.
But ' everything that's happening is legal, and it's allowed to be done,' said Laura Stephenson, a professor and chair of the department of political science at the University of Western Ontario.
Poilievre has asked the government to consider three changes: to require that candidates have more than the current minimum of 100 voter signatures needed to get on the ballot; that those signatures be exclusive to each candidate; and that each candidate needs their own official agent (the person who manages campaign finances).
The Longest Ballot Committee has the same official agent for each of its candidates, and goes to the same voters to obtain physical signatures for nomination packages.
Stephenson said some of the proposals could, in theory, 'tighten things up while still maintaining the integrity of the democratic process.'
'The key is that this shouldn't be seen as a political step. If these kinds of rules were being brought forward by Elections Canada … it doesn't have any political tint to it,' she said of the timing of Poilievre's demands.
The one issue on which everyone seems to agree is that the protest has sidelined independent candidates not tied to the movement who are running serious campaigns.
Bonnie Critchley, an independent candidate in Battle River—Crowfoot, has been frustrated by the protest drawing voter attention away from her campaign.
'This is a little bit sad for them. I'm very sorry for that,' said Sébastien CoRhino, one of the Longest Ballot Committee's organizers.
'But at the same time, it is impossible with the current political system to have independent candidates win an election,' he said.
Michael MacKenzie, the Jarislowsky Chair in Trust and Political Leadership at Vancouver Island University, says opposing the protest runs counter to Poilievre's stated focus on ensuring political elites have no say in the decisions of Canadians.
But he questions whether the original purpose of the movement — to reopen a national discussion about electoral reform that the Liberals have abandoned — is being lost in all the noise.
'It's not generating a lot of focused discussion on the complexities of electoral reform,' MacKenzie said.
'Most discussions are about the disruptions and the difficulties and confusions associated with this initiative, and there's been very little discussion about the benefits or drawbacks of the electoral reform itself.'