Advanced voting in a historic byelection in Alberta involving the current Conservative Party of Canada leader ends Monday night.
The riding of Battle River-Crowfoot has over 200 candidates, including Pierre Poilievre, who lost his long-held Ottawa-area seat in the federal election in April.
The majority of the candidates are a part of the Longest Ballot Committee, a protest group calling for changes to the electoral system.
The group carried out the same initiative during the April federal election in the Ottawa riding held and lost by Poilievre.
Elections Canada says for the first time, voters are being required to write out the name of the candidate they want to vote for on a blank ballot.
A list of all the candidates’ names will be available at voting locations on election day, and voters must write the name of the candidate they’re voting for–not a party–which will be counted in front of a witness.
The vote was called after Poilievre lost his Ottawa-area riding of Carleton in this year’s April election. That ballot was 91 candidates long, stretching to around a metre. If the current one in Battle River-Crowfoot went ahead, the ballot would have likely been at least two metres long.
The byelection was called after Conservative MP Damien Kurek stepped down to allow Poilievre to run. He won more than 82 per cent of the vote in the April election.
Residents of the riding, which stretches from the central Alberta-Saskatchewan border to the southern parts of the province, head to the polls on Aug. 18.
With files from The Canadian Press