The Longest-Shortest Ballot's Looming Quagmire
Monday, Elections Canada announced that, due to the inordinate number of candidates in Battle River—Crowfoot, voters will have to write out the name of the candidate they wish to elect. The implications are significant.
With Monday’s close of nominations, there are 214 registered candidates in the Alberta by-election whose only purpose is to normalise Pierre Poilievre’s residence at Stornoway.
201 of those candidates share the same official agent, one Tomas Szuchewycz. Of the other 13 candidates, ten are running as the candidate for a political party, and only three are, shall we call it, independent independents.
Those 201 candidates sharing an official agent are the Longest Ballot Committee, the protest group that wants to undermine our elections in order to change the way they are run. Of those 201 spam candidates, only 21 have so much as a website.
The effect of 214 candidates would normally be a giant, physically unwieldy ballot. Just holding it would be a challenge, much less taking the time to figure out where on this long sheet a specific candidate may be found in order to apply a checkmark.
Our elections need the ability to offer independent candidates. Indeed, more independents — and more independence — would greatly improve Parliament’s effectiveness as a legislative body in keeping the executive to account. Yet, by offering over 200 independent candidates as part of a protest, none of which are offering as serious contenders in this election, the very cause of independent candidacy is being hurt. The one serious independent candidate in this election, Bonnie Critchley, who is a credible threat to Pierre Poilievre, is buried in a sea of noise through these other candidates.
Poilievre’s own candidacy is a comedy in its own right, with him posting this utterly bizarre picture of himself wearing a kid’s toy police badge at the Calgary Stampede. The badge appears to be this one, handed out by the Calgary Police Service to children.
The big problem that comes out of this by-election ballot being done as a write-in ballot is related to this wannabe lawman, whose popularity has collapsed in the face of a profoundly credible Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Elections Canada, in throwing in the towel on a ballot with 214 names on it, and requiring every elector to write the name of the candidate they wish to see elected, is going to give every voter in Battle River—Crowfoot a chance to second-guess themselves. For those who voted for Damien Kurek just a few months ago by placing an “X” next to the name of the Conservative candidate, they will now have to consciously write out “Pierre Poilievre.” That may give more than a few of them some serious pause.
In the press release from Elections Canada, they say that names can be misspelt as long as “the intent” is clear — but also, conformant with election law — the write-in ballot may not only name the party. Conservative voters who want to vote Conservative cannot simply write “Conservative” on the ballot; while the intent is clear, the vote will be thrown out because the Conservatives are not, in their own right, a candidate.
If Bonnie Critchley (or anyone else other than Pierre Poilievre) wins this by-election and there are a significant number of rejected ballots, there will be a legal battle the likes of which we have not seen since November, 2000, when our neighbours to the south picked their president over a handful of “hanging chads.” Far worse if the number of ballots that specify a party but not a candidate exceeds the election margin, which is a very real possibility.
In that scenario, every rejected ballot will be studied in a courtroom, one at a time, to determine the “intent" of the vote. It is hard to argue that a vote that names the party but not the candidate did not intend to vote for the candidate for that party. Accepting that premise, however, undermines the very core of our electoral system where, at least nominally, we vote for individual representatives rather than their party.
If a voter writes in “Damien Kurek,” was their intent clear? If we interpret the election as voting for a party’s candidate, he is the very recent Conservative MP for the riding. The intent, then, is clear. If we interpret the vote as an election of individuals, then such a vote is clearly a protest. The protest would not be against the electoral system itself, but rather against the Conservative party and their flailing badge-wearing leader.
On the other hand, if Poilievre does win, any of the 213 defeated candidates could just as easily raise a fuss that by removing their names from the ballot, the election was thrown to the one name that every resident is likely to already know. Elections are already largely popularity contests to a much greater extent than they should be, and offering voters a chance to simply write in a name is an invitation to write the name with which they are most familiar.
Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perreault made a courageous decision in mandating a write-in ballot, with the candidates simply listed at the table and voting booth for voters to peruse. It is a profoundly pragmatic decision in the face of a mass printing of unmanageably large custom-cut paper ballots. More importantly, he found a way to completely neuter the longest ballot committee’s offensive offensive while remaining the neutral arbiter of the election. The longest ballot becoming the shortest ballot undermines the whole structure of their protest.
But it also risks opening Pandora’s Box and becoming an entirely different kind of longest ballot — one that drags on for far too long after election day.
There is another factor here and that is the prejudice this will cause to people unable to clearly write the name, whether because of visual disability or poor literacy. Other marginalized voters will also be hampered, likely preferring to forego their right to vote rather than be faced with the intimidating prospect of choosing and writing the name of their preferred candidate, especially if there is the pressure of a line-up waiting for their turn. I congratulate Perreault on his Solomonic solution to this protest.