Carleton voters face huge ballot, thanks to election protest

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OTTAWA – As advanced polls opened Friday morning in suburban Ottawa, voters in the riding of Carleton were certainly spoiled for choice.

Carleton – the riding targeted by perennial election protest group The Longest Ballot Committee – presented electors a choice of 91 candidates on a nearly metre-long ballot.

Nearly every voter standing in line Friday morning at Stittsville’s CARDELREC community center expressed some degree of bemused shock at the sheer size of the ballot, which needed to be folded six times to fit into the ballot box.

A returning officer told this reporter that Elections Canada has special trucks patrolling the riding to provide a steady stream of fresh ballot boxes, which fill quickly with the giant ballots.

Carleton’s 91-person ballot ties with the current record – previously set by the Longest Ballot Committee’s activism during the 2024 federal byelection in LaSalle–Emard–Verdun.

That topped the previous record of 84 candidates for the 2024 Toronto-St. Paul’s byelection.

Committee spokesperson Tomas Szuchewycz previously told the Toronto Sun they had also planned to run candidates in Nepean – the riding being contested by Liberal Leader Mark Carney – but weren’t able to due to tight deadlines and poor weather.

He told the Sun in January they’d initially planned to target University–Rosedale, Chrystia Freeland’s riding, before Mark Carney was chosen as Liberal leader.

The committee’s aim is to highlight the Trudeau Liberals’ failure to honour promised election reforms by creating comically-large ballots – flouting loose residency requirements and encouraging Canadians across the country to run as Independents.

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
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