Work of Longest Ballot Project Shows Broad Support for Electoral Reform
Forty-eight people will be on the ballot in the Terrebonne by-election to be held on April 13. Forty-two of these candidates represent the aim of the Longest Ballot Project to gather support to end the first-past-the-post method of counting votes and the conflict of interest in which the political parties with seats in the House of Commons amend the electoral law to favour themselves, thus enhancing positions of power and privilege above the citizens and residents which comprise the country called Canada.
The work of the Longest Ballot Project continues to underscore the widespread support across the country for electoral reform. The large number of people who respond to the call for candidates increases the more time goes by as the system of cartel party government further reveals the extent of its corruption. The people who the Longest Ballot candidates speak with when they go door to door to collect nomination signatures have expressed their disgust with the state of affairs in the House of Commons, especially the floor crossings and desertions which have taken place recently as the Carney government seeks to manufacture a majority of seats in the Parliament and declare it has an undisputed mandate to pursue its agenda uncontested.
All the independent candidates running on the platform of the Longest Ballot Project have been nominated by some 120 people, even though only 100 nominations are required to qualify. Even though time to finalize the nomination procedures was not enough, 40 plus more people submitted their names to be candidates and they too garnered the required number of nomination signatures. Another sign of support for the project is that each independent candidate supporting the Longest Ballot Project has their own official agent. Taken together, the number of people who have participated in one capacity or another in one election or by-election or several to promote the Longest Ballot Project has resulted in many more people gaining their own first-hand experience of what the electoral law stands for and what Canada's so-called representative political system and democracy are all about.
One of the teams collecting nomination signatures for Longest
Ballot candidates told TML that of the total number of
people they approached to sign the nomination forms, some 95
per cent deliberately signed because they decried the corruption
going on in the House of Commons and how the government and the
parties with seats in the House of Commons are operating.
The same sort of results have been seen every time the Longest Ballot has run candidates in a general election or by-election. There is enough experience to extrapolate that if every household across the country with people who qualify as electors were approached, the extent of those who want electoral reform would be practically universal. However, its appeal is already expressed very clearly by the fact that Longest Ballot candidates come from different parts of the country and their opinions on the political spectrum are in some cases vastly different to one another, yet they unite behind the need for a citizens' assembly to draft a new electoral law.
The detractors of the Longest Ballot Project never once pay attention to the indications of widespread support this project has nation-wide. They prefer to engage in disinformation, diversions and slander, which the system permits them to spread with impunity because nobody in positions of privilege and power holds the slanderers or defamers to account. On the contrary, they close ranks to oppose those who criticize the electoral system which is treated as a sacred cow. Some of the detractors of the Longest Ballot Project's attempts to provide a voice to the need for electoral reform are just malicious actors while others are so blinded by their belief that the liberal democratic institutions said to be representative are the best in the world, they dismiss the actions of the Longest Ballot Project, calling it a deliberate attempt to cause damage, perhaps even inspired by foreign powers. Instead of democratizing the electoral laws, they seek to criminalize the proponents of electoral reform and the Longest Ballot Project.
Some of the MPs and people in the media, both legacy and social, who spew vitriol against the Longest Ballot Project are even blatantly ignorant about the electoral law -- both what it actually says as well as the premises which inform it. But there is no authority save that of the people who speak out in their own name which shuts down their vitriol and raises the modern democratic guideline, No Investigation, No Right to Speak.
The so-called hearings of the House of Commons Standing Committee (PROC) into the Longest Ballot were a black mark against the democratic understanding that the aim of hearings is to seek truth from facts. The disinformation and outright hysteria uttered there against the Longest Ballot Project merely served to further highlight the elitist essence of Canada's electoral system and laws which serve to keep the people out of power.
The disinformation, lies and slanders are a blatant diversion from the fact that those in positions of privilege and power and their advocates and media refuse to speak about the electoral law and how what is called a representative democracy functions to disempower Canadians. They refuse to address the fact that the democratic institutions face a profound crisis of legitimacy and credibility because what used to be political parties with primary organizations at the level of every riding have become part of a cartel party system which passes laws which favour narrow private interests. All laws passed in recent years have in the most egregious manner served to keep these parties in power and keep Canadians out of power, all of it done in the name of enhancing the democracy!
The truth of the matter is that these cartel parties are the gatekeepers of a democracy created to defend private interests and keep the people disempowered and this is precisely what they are doing. But that aim was supposed to be kept hidden. It is now so glaring that the more these gatekeepers scream in its defence, the more discredited that form of democracy becomes. It is such a fraud, so corrupt, so self-serving that none of its champions are capable of providing rational arguments in its defence.
While authorities have been calling for changes to the Canada
Elections Act
to quash electoral protests waged by people exercising their
right to
stand as candidates, the House of Commons Committee on Procedure and
House
Affairs which conducted a study of the
"Actions
of the 'Longest Ballot Committee' in recent Canadian Elections"
back in
October 2025 has now issued its recommendations. None of their
recommendations address the need to reform the electoral act in
a
manner which empowers Canadians and ends the privileged
positions of
the MPs with seats in the House of Commons or of party
governments. Should the cartel parties in the House of Commons exhibit the
arrogance of power once again, as they have done when enacting
amendments to the Canada Elections Act in the last 30
years, and pass self-serving amendments as proposed by PROC,
they will not only once again disgrace Canada's system of
democracy but themselves as well.
Instead of toeing the party line on this matter, MPs with seats in the House of Commons would do better to apprise themselves of what precisely the electoral law says and the significance of what it means. Shibboleths in praise of Canada's democracy are hollow indeed. We hear them often enough from this or that MP who clearly has no clue of what Canada's electoral system actually stipulates. In far too many cases, we hear vacuous chauvinist positions repeated to advocate civilizing values against "monstrous unbelievers at our gates."
The fact remains that if the work of the Longest Ballot and all its adherents were not effective in raising the need to renew the electoral system, the establishment forces would not be in such a feeding frenzy to wipe it out. These attempts will not succeed. Their attempts to restructure the state to dispose of the voice of Canadians requires disposing of Canadians themselves and Quebeckers and Indigenous Peoples altogether. This is a pipe dream eroding their own brains which is not good for them. If they know what is good for them, they should stop. For its part, the project espoused by the Longest Ballot Committee to advocate for the need to reform the electoral law and empower Canadians will not stop. It will march on.
This article was published in
Volume 56 Number 10 - March 25, 2026
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/TML2026/Articles/T560102.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca