Advance voting for a federal byelection in a rural Alberta riding with more than 200 candidates kicks off on Friday.
In a news release on Wednesday, Elections Canada said advance polls for the Battle River-Crowfoot federal byelection will open on Friday and go until Monday, Aug. 11.
The byelection was called after the riding’s re-elected MP, Damien Kurek, resigned to let Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre run for a new seat in the House of Commons.
There are 214 candidates registered in the byelection, making it the largest number of candidates on a federal ballot in Canadian history. Those running include Poilievre, Liberal candidate Darcy Spady, NDP candidate Katherine Swampy, Jonathan Bridges of the People’s Party of Canada, and Ashley MacDonald of the Green Party.
Elections Canada stated that, due to the record-breaking number of candidates, voters will be provided with special write-in ballots instead of the standard list-style ballot.
Most of the candidates on the ballot are associated with a group of electoral reform advocates known as the Longest Ballot Committee.
Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre, speaking in Calgary on Thursday, is asked how he is feeling heading into the Aug. 18 byelection where he’s running to regain a seat in the House of Commons.
At an unrelated news conference in Calgary on Thursday, Poilievre expressed frustration with the group and the candidates that are associated with it.
“They’re adding their names even though they’re not campaigning. They don’t expect to win. They just want to inundate the ballot to confuse the situation [and] make it harder for people to vote,” Poilievre said.
Poilievre suggested the government should change the number of signatures a candidate is required to have on a nomination form. Currently, candidates only need 100 signatures to qualify for the ballot.
“The simple solution is to say that if you want to be a candidate, you have to get several hundred signatures of your own. You can’t just use the same 100 or 200 signatures for all the candidates.”
He also recommended that every candidate should be required to have their own financial agent.
Speaking at a candidate forum last week, independent candidate Bonnie Critchley expressed frustration with the Longest Ballot Committee and noted that several candidates won’t be able to vote in the byelection because they don’t live in the riding.
“If you want to run for an area, you need to live here. This longest ballot crap, that’s got to stop,” she said.
Another candidate forum is set for Thursday evening at the Stettler Community Hall.
At the news conference in Calgary, Poilievre also talked about his experience campaigning in the rural Alberta riding.
“I’m meeting a lot of people who are very angry about the way that the federal government has abused and mistreated Alberta. What they’re saying is the era of ‘pay up and shut up’ has got to come to an end,” he said.
“Alberta deserves a better deal within Canada, and one of the ways we make that happen, one of the ways we unite our country, is to produce our resources.”
Elections Canada said electors can also vote early by mail or at the local Elections Canada office in Battle River-Crowfoot until Tuesday, Aug. 12. The official election day for the byelection is Aug. 18.
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