To stop long ballot protests, MP committee calls on government to change candidacy rules

A put up of common land citizens committee is calling on the authorities to do changes to federal election rules it says would make it harder for electoral reform advocates to stage long ballot protests.

A group of electoral reform advocates known as the Longest Ballot Committee has rallied a flood of candidates in more than half a dozen electoral contests over the past five years.

In the past, the group's efforts have forced Elections Canada to make adjustments to the ballots — in a number of instances, the election body printed ballots that were nearly a metre long — confounding voters and causing counting delays.

The procedures and House affairs committee released a report on Tuesday that called for a number of changes to rules that govern who can run as a candidate.

As it stands, a candidate needs 100 signatures from voters in the riding to run in an election or byelection — and the long ballot group has in the past had voters sign multiple nominations sheets.

MPs on the committee recommend that the government make it a violation of the Canada Elections Act to sign more than one nomination form and to make it explicit on the forms that you can only sign for one candidate.

The report also calls on the government to make it illegal to persuade a voter to sign more than one nomination form and that doing so should be "subject to penalties," though the report didn't specifically say what the penalty should be.

The committee's report comes as the Longest Ballot Committee is running dozens of candidates in an upcoming byelection in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne. So far, 48 candidates have been confirmed to be running in that byelection.

The House report says the rules should be changed so that a person can act as an official agent — someone who acts as a candidate's representative and handles campaign finances — for one candidate per riding.

In past elections, one of the group's organizers has served as the official agent for all or most of the candidates associated with the Longest Ballot Committee. But so far, the candidates in Terrebonne have mostly recruited their own official agents.

The 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.

Szuchewycz noted pointed to their efforts in Terrebonne to use unique official agents for each candidate and said the changes to the signature requirements wouldn't deter their efforts.

"The only recommended change for us would be a new ban on voters nominating more than one candidate, but we are looking forward to meeting this new challenge," he said.

The group has organized as many as 200 candidates to run in a single byelection — in Battle River-Crowfoot last August. In that byelection, Elections Canada opted to use a write-in ballot rather than print an enormous list of names.

The Bloc Québécois submitted a supplementary report that denounced the recommendations around requiring unique signatures for nomination forms.

"Although intended to limit abuses of the democratic system, [this measure] actually undermines it by assuming that a voter cannot 'change their mind' during an election campaign," the Bloc's submission reads.

"Furthermore, limiting a voter to a single signature could be interpreted by some as official support for a candidate. Such a perception could give the impression that a voter’s support becomes public and thus undermine, in the minds of some citizens, the principle of the secrecy of the ballot, possibly prompting them to refuse to sign a nomination form."

The Bloc also cited concerns about putting undue strain on election workers who will be forced to ensure a voter hasn't signed more than one nomination paper.

Senior writer

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