Elections Canada head suggests candidacy rules should be reviewed after byelection delays

Canada's chief electoral officer says it's time to review candidacy rules after a massive ballot caused delays in declaring byelection results for the second time this year.

Ballots for Monday's byelection in the Montreal riding of LaSalle-Émard-Verdun included the names of 91 candidates.

Special ballots nearly a metre in length had to be printed to accommodate all the names. The overly large ballots caused delays in vote counting and a final result wasn't announced until after 2:45 a.m. ET Tuesday.

The lengthy ballot also created problems for voters with accessibility issues, Stéphane Perrault, head of Elections Canada, told a committee of senators on Tuesday.

"This situation is starting to raise accessibility issues for voters who may be blind or have other accessibility issues. And so I think that we need to look at the rules," Perrault said in French.

LaSalle-Émard-Verdun was the second byelection this year to feature a very long ballot. Ballots for the Toronto-St. Paul's byelection in June listed 84 candidates; final results in that contest were not released until 4:30 a.m. ET the next day.

Most of the candidates in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun and Toronto-St. Paul's were linked to an electoral reform advocacy group called the Longest Ballot Committee. The group wants to put a citizens' assembly in charge of electoral reform and says political parties are too reluctant to make the government more representative of the electorate.

"We can say without a doubt our campaign was a success because we had so much fun and sparked important conversations about our shared democracy," the group's organizers said in a statement on Tuesday.

Election rules used to require that candidates place a $1,000 deposit in order to run. That requirement was struck down as unconstitutional in 2017 when a judge found it violated section 3 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That section guarantees an individual's right to run for office and participate in elections.

Donald Bourgeois, a lawyer and author of the book Elections Law in Canada, said that a legal argument could be made in court for reinstating the deposit requirement in light of the recent long-ballot campaigns.

"The purpose [of the advocacy candidates] is not to get elected. The purpose is to change the electoral process," Bourgeois told CBC News.

A number of provincial jurisdictions still maintain deposit requirements for candidates.

While Perrault said Tuesday getting rid of the $1,000 requirement was a "good thing," he suggested there are other rules that could be tightened up, specifically on signatures and official agents.

In order to run in a federal election or byelection, a candidate must get at least 100 signatures from voters that live in the riding in which they wish to run. An Elections Canada spokesperson told CBC News that "a significant number of repeat names and signatures" appeared on multiple candidates' nomination papers.

A candidate also must name an "official agent" to act as a representative and handle campaign finances. All of the longest ballot candidates had the same official agent.

When asked about Perrault's suggestions, Bourgeois said making administrative changes on signatures and official agents "might slow down a few people." He said there could still be ways for determined advocates to get their names on the ballot.

"I don't think it would be effective. However, the chief electoral officer knows his business much better than I do," he said.

Perrault said he plans to raise some of these issues with the House of Commons as it studies Bill C-65, which would make changes to the Elections Act. That bill passed second reading in the House in June and is set to be studied by the House procedures committee.

Candidates associated with the Longest Ballot Committee received just over 1,100 votes combined in LaSalle-Émard-Verdun. The gap between the winner and third runner-up was just over 600 votes.

Two of the longest ballot candidates received zero votes, making them only the second and third candidates in federal electoral history to fail to win a single vote in a contested riding.