Montreal-area byelection to use write-in ballots due to dozens of protest candidates

The head of Elections Canada said voters will have to write in their pick in next month’s byelection in an off-island Montreal suburb due to the long list of protest candidates running in the riding.

Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault told a committee of MPs on Tuesday that the write-in option worked well the last time candidates associated with the group known as the Longest Ballot Committee flooded a riding with dozens of candidates.

“We had very few complaints about the use of that ballot, so we felt this was a better experience for the voters in general,” Perrault told the committee.

A total of 48 candidates have been confirmed in the Terrebonne byelection — one of three votes being held in April.

The Longest Ballot Committee has rallied hundreds of candidates in more than half a dozen electoral contests over the past five years. The group most recently managed to sign up roughly 200 candidates to run in an Alberta byelection in August.

Elections Canada has in the past printed nearly metre-long ballots to accommodate the mass number of candidates — but counting those gigantic ballots took hours to count and delayed results.

Perrault said a write-in ballot, like the one used in August, was a “lesser evil” compared to the mammoth list of candidates.

Voters will be provided with a full list of candidates at their polling station in Terrebonne, Perrault said.

Electors will need to write the name of their preferred candidate — just writing a preferred party doesn’t count. A ballot won’t be discounted if there is a spelling mistake, as long as it’s clear who the voter is endorsing.

The long ballot protest organizers say they want a citizens’ assembly in charge of electoral reform, and say political parties are too reluctant to make government more representative of the electorate.

The House procedures committee released a report on Tuesday that called on the government to change candidate nomination rules in an effort to curb the group’s efforts.

But representatives from the Longest Ballot Committee say they won’t be deterred by any changes.

“We wish MPs would stop wasting their time trying to think up new ways to ban long ballots and instead reflect and recuse themselves from decisions on election law — and instead pass responsibility to a permanent, independent and nonpartisan body, such as a citizens’ assembly,” Tomas Szuchewycz, one of the organizers, told CBC News in a statement.

The byelection in Terrebonne was called after the Supreme Court ordered a redo after voters and candidates complained about misprints on mail-in ballot envelopes that resulted in those votes not being counted.

Byelections are also being held in the Toronto ridings of University-Rosedale and Scarborough Southwest — two seats that were recently vacated by former Liberal cabinet ministers.

If the Liberals win two out of the three contests, they will secure a thin majority in the House of Commons.

The byelections are being held on April 13, with advance polls open April 3 to April 6.