Stephen Smysnuik
The Level’s Guide to Poilievre’s Long-Ballot By-Election Battle
Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
The Topline
- Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is running in an August 18 by-election in Battle River–Crowfoot, AB, after losing his Ontario seat in April’s federal election.
- The Longest Ballot Committee has flooded the riding with over 195 candidates to protest Canada’s first-past-the-post voting system—forcing Elections Canada to use write-in ballots for the first time.
A “blatant abuse” of democracy
The Longest Ballot Committee (LBC) has yet again targeted a riding held by the (ahem) former Carleton MP, hoping to win by stacking the ballot – this time with a record-breaking 195 candidates.
According to the Canadian Press , Poilievre described the LBC’s tactics as a “scam” and a deliberate attempt to “weaponize the ballot and disrupt our democratic process” rather than engage with it.
He’s also called on Parliament to pass new laws to prevent long-ballot protests from happening again.
Elections Canada has opted to use a write-in system for the by-election to avoid the logistical problems resulting from a 200-plus-person ballot.
> Deeper Dive
No public opinion polling has been released for the by-election, though Poilievre is widely expected to win the seat. Damien Kurek, who vacated the seat in order for Poilievre to run, won the seat handily in April with 80 per cent of the vote.
Poilievre lost his long-held Carlton riding to Liberal candidate Bruce Fanjoy in the April election. The LBC targeted that election as well, with 91 candidates that resulted in a comedically long physical ballot that measured almost a metre long.
According to an Angus Reid Institute poll , 70 per cent of Canadians are aware of the protest, but only 43 per cent called the tactic “appropriate."
Another 47 per cent support a law banning long-ballot stunts altogether, with 79 per cent of Conservative voters supporting the law.
> Other Voices
Lori Turnbull, director of Dalhousie’s School of Public Administration, called the actions “B.S.” and are “disconnected from its stated goal and potentially damaging to the democracy that they claim to care so much about.”
Duff Conacher, founder of Democracy Watch and a longtime advocate for reform, criticized the LBC’s ballot-flooding strategy in an interview with the CBC , calling it “the wrong tactic” and “a step backward,” arguing that it creates confusion for voters without moving the needle on actual reform.
Protest by paperwork
The Longest Ballot Committee (LBC) is sabotaging the system’s reliability until reform becomes the only path forward.
There’s no attempt to win votes, but to prove a point – the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system is fundamentally flawed and very, very broken.
Responding to Poilievre’s criticism, the LBC issued a statement , reading, “Ever since we started the LBC years ago we have been calling for politicians like Mr. Poilievre to step aside and recuse themselves from deciding election rules.
“The reason is simple: when it comes to election law, politicians just have too much skin in the game to be calling the shots. There is a clear and inappropriate conflict of interest. After all, what Prime Minister would reform the system which brought them to power?”
By targeting Poilievre – first in Carleton, now in Alberta – they’re drawing attention to the election of a powerful critic of electoral reform.
> Deeper Dive
The current total for the by-election is 195 candidates on the ballot. The LBC’s efforts aside, Poilievre already faces 10 candidates running for this seat, including:
- Darcy Spady from the Liberal Party
- Katherine Swampy, the NDP candidate
- Ashley MacDonald from the Green Party
- Jonathan Bridges from the People’s Party of Canada
- non-LBC-affiliated independents Bonnie Critchley and Sarah Spanier)
In April, the LBC ran 91 candidates in Carleton, where Pierre Poilievre was the incumbent. The ballot was nearly a metre long and delayed vote counting by hours.
This ballot tied for the all-time record with the 2024 LaSalle—Émard—Verdun federal by-election, which was also attributed to LBC efforts.
Canada has flirted with electoral reform for decades, including Justin Trudeau’s broken 2015 promise to scrap FPTP, though no government has made a serious move toward actual reform.
Originally affiliated with the satirical Rhinoceros Party, the LBC has flooded certain elections with as many candidates as legally possible in an effort to break the FPTP system in plain view, forcing Canadians and its politicians to reckon with its flaws.
> Other Voices
Supporters of the long ballot claim that public frustration is part of the point of the protest.
Others have claimed that Poilievre’s criticism of the long-ballot initiative is rooted in fear around losing his seat – not out of any particular criticism of the process itself.
One Redditor wrote , “He's supporting ‘law‑abiding protests’ [referring to the Freedom Convoy], while at the same time arguing with a law‑abiding protest.”
Another user responded, “The Tory handwringing over a long-standing, at worst mildly-annoying protest movement as soon as it dared to in any way inconvenience their leader is not a good look.”
