GUNTER: Elections Canada put an end to Longest Ballot Committee's trickery
Now, with a write-in ballot and the need to scan through 214 names, there’s a solid chance you’ll throw up your hands and stay home on election day.
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So the Longest Ballot Committee has been thwarted — sort of — in its effort to hijack next month’s byelection in Battle River-Crowfoot.
The committee’s stunt of clogging the ballot in the central Alberta riding with more than 200 names worked. By the close of nominations on Tuesday, the committee had convinced more than 200 of its supporters to let their names stand, even though most of them have never been to the riding and have no intention of campaigning.
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But Elections Canada outsmarted the committee.
There is a provision in the federal Elections Act that permits voters to use write-in ballots, rather than the typical list-style ballot. It is usually only used for special electors, such as voters who show up at an Elections Canada office on a day not set up for advance polling.
Write-in ballots typically aren’t used over a full riding in an official byelection, but Elections Canada decided there was no prohibition against using write-in at every polling station in the ranching, farming and oil-drilling riding.
So on election day Aug. 18 and at advance polls, voters will have a list of all the nominees to look at, if they want, Then they will write their preferred candidate’s name on a single-line ballot. Perfectly correct spelling is not required, so long as it is obvious to returning officers for whom the ballot was cast.
This saves Elections Canada from having to produce a ballot nearly seven feet long.
That’s a good thing. Such long ballots in the past have led to hours-long counting delays on election night.
It’s a practical solution in the face of another stunt by the committee.
And it counteracts some, but not all of the ways the committee diminishes the very democracy it says it is trying to improve.
Write-in balloting, however, discourages turnout. It seems to some voters to be more complicated and less reliable than choosing their candidate from a reasonably short list with party affiliation clearly shown.
And write-in balloting favours incumbents or, in the case of Pierre Poilievre, very well-known candidates.
Most voters in Battle River–Crowfoot or elsewhere in Canada know Poilievre by name. If you want to vote Conservative, you simply show up at the polls and write in his famous name.
But if you’re the Liberal or NDP or other legitimate candidate, on a ballot not cluttered with self-anointed election activists from out of town, you could count on a voter who didn’t want to vote for Poilievre to look for your party’s name among five or six choices and cast a vote for use.
Now, with a write-in ballot and the need to scan through 214 names, there’s a solid chance you’ll throw up your hands and stay home on election day.
What’s the point, a lot of voters may ask? In April, the Conservatives carried the riding by nearly 72 percentage points. If you make it harder to vote, as the committee has done, you mostly make it more difficult for ABP — Anybody but Poilievre.
In their self-absorbed, sanctimonious push for proportional representation to replace Canada’s current system of first-past-the-post elections, the committee has weakened the vote of individual voters.
Proportional representation would be a less democratic form of government, too.
It breaks the direct connection between the citizen and his or her local MP. While there are many variations of proportional representation that seek to overcome this problem, for the most part each party puts up a list of candidates and, depending on how much of the popular vote they win, that determines how many of the party-chosen names make it to Ottawa.
The MP for your riding will be more beholden to party bosses than to you.
Proportional representation also leads to more minorities and more coalitions. Sometimes in those coalitions, small fringe parties hold enormous sway, out of all proportion to their vote share.
No thanks.
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