Voters in the upcoming Battle River-Crowfoot byelection in Alberta will need to write in who they are voting for, Elections Canada said Monday.
This comes after the deadline for candidates to enter passed. More than 200 signed up, mostly due to a movement called the Longest Ballot Committee, which undertook the initiative during the April federal election in the riding held and lost by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.
The goal for the group is to change who makes decisions on election laws. It wants a citizens’ assembly put in charge of crafting a new electoral system, arguing that political parties are reluctant to make the government more representative of a diverse electorate.
Along with the Conservative leader, the list includes Liberal candidate Darcy Spady, NDP’s Katherine Swampy, a United Party of Canada candidate, a Libertarian Party of Canada candidate, and a Christian Heritage Party of Canada candidate.
Elections Canada says a list of all the candidates’s names will be available at voting locations on election day. Voters must write the name of the candidate they’re voting for–not a party–which will be counted in front of a witness.
All the same security and integrity measures found on a typical ballot will still be used.
A complete list of candidates in Battle River-Crowfoot’s Aug. 18 vote will be supplied to voters, Elections Canada said, and every adapted ballot that clearly names a candidate, and not a party, will be counted in front of a witness.
For those in need of accessibility tools, they will still be available. Elections Canada says some of those tools, such as a candidate list and voting template in braille, will only be available on election day.
The vote was called after Poilievre lost his Ottawa-area riding of Carleton in this year’s April election. That ballot was 91 candidates long, stretching to around a metre. If the current one in Battle River-Crowfoot went ahead, the ballot would have likely been at least two metres long.
The byelection was called after Conservative MP Damien Kurek stepped down to allow Poilievre to run.
Residents of the riding, which stretches from the central Alberta-Saskatchewan border to the southern parts of the province, head to the polls on Aug. 18. Applying to vote by mail-in voting is available until Aug. 12.
With files from Lauryn Heintz and The Canadian Press
