Elections Canada managing long ballot with 90 candidates challenging Poilievre

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre during a campaign rally in Trenton, N.S., on Wednesday, April 23, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

OTTAWA — Elections Canada says it has measures in place to help people vote in the Ontario riding where Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is being challenged by 90 other candidates on the ballot.

Poilievre is in a tight race against Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy, who has been waging an intense ground battle in the riding.

But a protest group called the Longest Ballot Committee has convinced dozens of other candidates to register to run as Independents in Poilievre’s Ottawa-area Carleton riding, in addition to the usual main party candidates.

The protest group opposes the first-past-the-post voting system and is seeking to build support for electoral reform. It has fielded long lists of candidates in prominent federal byelections in recent years, inflating the physical size of ballots and delaying the counts.

Elections Canada says on its website that the ballot for the Carleton electoral district in this general election looks different than usual. It says the ballot is larger and has two columns with candidate names, which are listed alphabetically.

A two-column ballot was also used, the website says, during the by-election in the electoral district of Lasalle—Émard—Verdun in 2024, where there were also 91 candidates running in the riding.

Elections Canada says a large-print list of candidates will be available on election day and that a braille template has been modified to fit the two-column ballot.

To maintain the integrity and security of the ballot, the agency says poll workers will be trained in a new method of folding the large ballot “so as to maintain the secrecy of the vote.”

It also says the “unusual form and size” of the ballot requires that experienced election officers be assigned to polling stations.

The website says the ballot adapted for the purposes of the election is of an “unusual size” and it’s estimated that a ballot box will hold approximately 100 of the ballots.

“Consequently, several ballot boxes will have to be made available at the polling stations to allow for the receipt of all ballots marked by electors,” the website says.

Poilievre is seeking re-election in his own riding against dozens of other candidates while Liberal Leader Mark Carney is running for the first time against just four challengers in Nepean.

Elections Canada says there could be a “small increase” in service times when voting due to the larger ballot and that the election results for Carleton may take longer to report and publish online.

The website warns that the form and the size of the ballot could lead to “a greater number of spoiled ballots.”

The waning days of the federal election campaign saw voters turn out in record numbers for advance polls.

Elections Canada said the four days of advance polling between Friday and Monday set a new record for turnout, with an estimated 7.3 million people casting ballots early.

That’s up 25 per cent from the 5.8 million people who took part in advance voting in the 2021 federal election.

With files from Craig Lord

This report by The Canadian Press was first published April 24, 2025.

Catherine Morrison, The Canadian Press