Longest Ballot Committee

{{Short description|Canadian activist group}}

{{Use mdy dates|date=January 2025}}

File:Longest Ballot Committee Commemorative Pin.png

The Longest Ballot Committee is a political movement in Canada, at one time affiliated with the Rhinoceros Party,{{Cite web |last=Elliott |first=Blair |date=2023-04-19 |title=Horning In |url=http://maisonneuve.org/article/2023/04/19/horning-in/ |access-date=2024-06-09 |website=Maisonneuve |language=en}} known for flooding ballots with a large number of independent candidates in protest of the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system and other electoral reform related issues.{{Cite news |last=Passifiume |first=Bryan |date=2024-06-03 |title=Why Mitch Marner and Alberta have become big issues in a record-breaking Toronto byelection |url=https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/mitch-marner-electoral-reform-and-alberta-toronto-byelection |access-date=2024-06-09 |work=The National Post}} The group has gained national attention, most notably during the 2022 Mississauga—Lakeshore federal by-election, the 2023 Winnipeg South Centre federal by-election,{{Cite news |last=Passifiume |first=Bryan |date=2023-12-27 |title=Long ballot activists planning to make short work of Toronto byelection |url=https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/long-ballot-activists-toronto-byelection |archive-url= |archive-date= |access-date= |work=The National Post}} and the 2024 Toronto—St. Paul's federal by-election.

The committee's actions have prompted amendments to election laws to accommodate a greater number of names on the ballots{{Cite web |date=2024-06-19 |title=17-B-2023-02 – Adaptations to ensure that the names of all candidates can appear on the ballot and to bring related amendments to voting procedures and counting votes |url=https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=loi/adap/ada/jun1923&document=adapt2&lang=e |access-date=2024-06-09 |website=Elections Canada}} and generated significant controversy.{{Cite web |last=Posted |first=Shannon Sampert |date=2023-06-15 |title=Opinion: 48 candidates is no voting panacea |url=https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/2023/06/15/48-candidates-is-no-voting-panacea |access-date=2024-06-09 |website=Winnipeg Free Press |language=en-US}}

In the June 2024 Toronto—St. Paul's federal by-election, it took hours for Elections Canada workers to count all the ballots. While polls closed at 8:30 p.m. ET, the final results weren't known until about 4:30 a.m. The agency said it was bogged down because there were dozens of candidates on the unwieldy, nearly metre-long ballot — some of whom were proportional representation activists running as a protest to the country's first-past-the-post voting system.{{cite news |last1=Tasker |first1=John Paul |title=Conservatives win longtime Liberal stronghold Toronto-St. Paul's in shock byelection result |url=https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/byelection-polls-liberal-conservative-ballot-vote-1.7243748 |access-date=25 June 2024 |publisher=CBC News |date=25 June 2024}}