Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on the Liberal government to introduce changes to Canada’s election rules that would curb long ballot protests.
Poilievre wrote a letter to government House leader Steven MacKinnon on Tuesday saying legislation should be brought before the House of Commons when MPs return to Ottawa in September.
“This is not democracy in action. It is a deliberate attempt to manipulate the rules, confuse voters and undermine confidence in our elections,” Poilievre wrote of the protests in his letter.
A group of electoral reform advocates known as the Longest Ballot Committee is currently signing up more than 100 candidates to run in next month’s byelection in Battle River–Crowfoot, where Poilievre is seeking to regain a seat in the House. As of Tuesday, 152 candidates had registered to run in the Alberta riding.
Poilievre lost his longtime Ottawa-area riding of Carleton in April’s general election, where there were 91 candidates running, most of whom were also associated with the Longest Ballot Committee.
Poilievre posted his letter to MacKinnon on social media, referring to the protests as the “longest ballot scam.”
Although Poilievre only mentioned Battle River–Crowfoot and Carleton in his letter, the advocates have organized a number of long ballots in recent years — including in Liberal strongholds such as Toronto–St. Paul’s and LaSalle–Émard–Verdun in 2024.
Those elections have seen metre-long ballots that have resulted in delayed vote counts and have confounded some voters.
The committee’s organizers want to put a citizens’ assembly in charge of electoral reform and say political parties are too reluctant to make government more representative of the electorate.
In his letter, Poilievre says the government should change the number of signatures a candidate is required to have on a nomination form — from the current 100 to 0.5 per cent of a riding’s population. He also said electors should only be allowed to sign one nomination form and that candidates should only have one official agent.
The Longest Ballot Committee has electors sign multiple nomination forms and uses the same official agent to represent all their candidates.
In an email to CBC News, the organizers rebuked Poilievre’s suggested rule changes.
“We have been calling for politicians like Mr. Poilievre to step aside and recuse themselves from deciding election rules. The reason is simple: 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 statement said.
Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault has called for some changes he said would help prevent long ballots.
Speaking in front of a House committee last fall, Perrault argued that “certain penalties” should be imposed on individuals who sign — or encourage others to sign — multiple nomination papers in an effort to get as many candidates on a ballot as possible, though he didn’t say what those penalties should be.
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