Longest Ballot Committee

The Longest Ballot Committee is a political movement in Canada, at one time affiliated with the Rhinoceros Party,^[1] 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.^[2] The movement has gained national attention, most notably during the 2022 Mississauga—Lakeshore federal by-election, the 2023 Winnipeg South Centre federal by-election,^[3] and the 2024 Toronto—St. Paul's federal by-election.^[4] The committee's actions have prompted amendments to election laws to accommodate a greater number of names on the ballots,^[5] and generated significant controversy.^[6]

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 were not 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.^[4] In the 2025 federal election, the Longest Ballot Committee targeted the Carleton riding in the Ottawa area, where Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre was running.^[7] Poilievre would end up losing his riding, with the group declaring victory.^[8]