Canada

Surprised by some of the comments here.

Whether or not the solution being proposed is the best or only one is the question.

Instead several users are taking any discussion as being anti-democratic.

The Chief Electoral Officer of Canada raised concerns about how these long ballots were impeding the democratic process, including by presenting barriers to accessibility by voters.

This has become an increasing problem, with former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s riding being targeted in 2019.

There seem to be two kinds of barriers:

• physical barriers to finding and marking the ballot of their choice
• becoming informed of the positions and intents of candidates when there are so many candidates that do not actually intend to serve as MPs.

The underlying issue seems to be that a small group of qualified voters in a targeted riding are nominating a very large number of candidates.

That is 60+ candidates put forward by the longest ballot group were all nominated by the same small number of voters.

Is this reasonable?

Democratic rights are balanced with responsibility under the Charter. Is it reasonable for a single voter to sign the nomination papers for 50 candidates or even 20.

Only being able to sign the papers for one candidate in one election period may be too limiting as not all candidates obtain enough signatures to be minor drop out later for other reasons.

Would limiting the right to sign nomination papers to 2 or 5 candidates be a reasonable balance under the Charter?

While this specific solution being proposed by this CPC member may be too restrictive, it seems worth a debate.

And perhaps the second issue of voters being able to reasonably obtain information about the intent and positions of candidates would be resolved if there were not so many nominated candidates.

The Rhinoceros party position that their candidates would resign if elected was well known so voters could make an informed choice. The current long ballot situation doesn’t offer that choice.

A proactive referral to the Supreme Court of Canada might be the best way to get an understanding of the balance of democratic rights. It would be best to have a read on what would be a reasonable limitation on both those who sign nominations and those who put themselves forward vs the responsibility to have accessible ballots with candidates who intend to serve before any changes to the the elections act is brought forward.