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 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 will likely 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 in Toronto–St. Paul's had two columns of candidates listed side-by-side, instead of the traditional single column. In addition, the circles where voters mark their preference were 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.