NATIONAL PULSE – Is the ‘long ballot’ inappropriate or fair game?
(Image: Mel Rothenburger)
More Canadians support (47%) than oppose (34%) a law to prevent metre-long ballots in future elections
By ANGUS REID INSTITUTE
July 28, 2025 – After battling 90 other candidates in April and set to duke it out with 200 more in his upcoming August byelection, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre wants to legislate a stop to what he calls the “longest ballot scam”.
New data from the non-profit Angus Reid Institute finds half (47%) of Canadians on board with passing a law to stop the efforts of the Longest Ballot Committee, which has stacked Poilievre’s last two election contests to protest Canada’s first-past-the-post electoral system.
*Smaller sample size, interpret with caution
Two-in-five (43%) Canadians call it inappropriate to flood candidates in elections as a protest, which made the Carleton ballot a metre long in April. This, after Elections Canada announced voters would have to write-in their preferred candidate rather than printing an extended ballot to accommodate the hundreds of names put forward in the upcoming Battle River-Crowfoot byelection. That contest will pit Poilievre against more than 200 other candidates.
*Smaller sample size, interpret with caution
Although Poilievre has been the most recent target, past key Liberal byelections have also had long ballots. Despite this, it is Conservatives who are both more likely than others to call long ballot protests out-of-line (67%) and most likely to support a law making it more difficult to pull off in the future (79%).
ArmchairMayor.ca 
Not thinking ahead, those that vote to limit the number of people running for a position! To do that is to invite abuse. If the current leader was “doing his job” then there would be very little opposition. As it is Poilievre was not elected in his riding. He should step down if he was truly “Canadian”
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