Will a massive ballot cause another vote count delay? Elections Canada is looking to avoid it

Elections Canada says it's taking steps ahead of an upcoming Montreal byelection to avoid a repeat of the hours-long delays that hampered ballot counting in a Toronto vote earlier this summer.

A total of 91 candidates will be on the ballot for the Sept. 16 byelection in LaSalle–Émard–Verdun, making it the longest ballot in the history of Canadian federal elections.

"Elections Canada is conscious of the importance of providing timely results on election night," the agency said in a statement.

"Due to the unusual circumstances created by the number of candidates on the ballot in LaSalle–Émard–Verdun, we have been conducting simulations to determine the best way to adapt our procedures to avoid unnecessary delays."

The agency said it's recruiting more workers to count votes cast during advance polls, and is also planning to start counting those votes before polls close on election day.

The previous record was set in June when 84 candidates put their names forward for the Toronto–St. Paul's election. The nearly metre-long ballot plagued the vote counting process and final results weren't announced until 4:30 a.m. the following day.

"The unusual dimensions of the ballot itself meant that some steps took more time than normal," an Elections Canada spokesperson told CBC News at the time. "Delays compounded across several steps over the course of the night."

As in that June byelection, a majority of the candidates on the ballot in LaSalle–Émard–Verdun are linked to the Longest Ballot Committee, a group protesting Canada's first-past-the-post voting system. The group wants a citizens' assembly to be in charge of electoral reform, because they say political parties are too reluctant to make the government more representative of the diverse views of the electorate.

Sebastien "CoRhino" Corriveau, an organizer of the protest and leader of the satirical Rhinoceros Party, hopes the campaign will raise awareness about electoral reform and proportional representation.

"It's a ridiculous way of doing stuff," he told The Canadian Press. "But we did try other ways before, and everything failed."

Corriveau said he's not hoping to have any impact on the outcome of the election, but he said the point the group is making is worth the inconvenience to voters.

"The system is rigged, and the rules are written by the winner," he said.

Elections Canada announced Tuesday that it would have to make a number of temporary changes to the Elections Act in order to accommodate the number of candidates. The law allows the head of Elections Canada to make short-term changes in the case of "an emergency, an unusual or unforeseen circumstance."

The ballots will have two columns of candidates listed side-by-side, instead of the traditional single column. In addition, the circles where voters mark their preference will be on both the right and left margins of the ballot. (The Elections Act states the circles should always be listed to the right of the candidate's name.)

Lori Turnbull, a political science professor at Dalhousie University, said the act is sufficient to give Elections Canada the flexibility to adjust to a oversized ballot in a byelection.

"You can plan ahead a little bit for [one byelection], but if this were to happen on a grander scale then that would be a whole different thing. But it won't because I don't think this campaign would have the organization to lift off 343 ridings with 100 people running," she said.

Turnbull said Elections Canada's experience with the June byelection will likely allow the agency to provide results more quickly in LaSalle–Émard–Verdun, but she cautioned it could still take longer than usual.

"There's only so much you can do because you're looking down a ballot that's got all these names on it to make sure it's not spoiled. So it's not like you can just find one X and then be done with it. You've got to look through the whole thing," she said.

Corriveau said when his group's members went door-to-door asking for signatures to get prospective candidates on the ballot, one out of every two people they asked signed the papers.

"The voting system is not the day-to-day concern of anybody in Canada right now, but people do agree it has to change," he said.

Despite breaking ballot records in Toronto and now Montreal, Turnbull suggested the longest ballot movement might not be gaining enough traction to create the change the group is hoping to see.

"It's just an annoyance. It's an annoyance to Elections Canada more than anybody else. It's an annoyance to the candidates and the people around the candidates who are extremely anxious to get a result," she said.

"It's not like the impact is going to change the rules of who wins the election or even threaten to split any votes or anything and take away from a candidate."

Advance polls in LaSalle–Émard–Verdun are set to open Friday.