Elections Canada says it's struggling under the weight of early voting

OTTAWA — Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer Stéphane Perrault hopes the government will increase minimum campaign periods because so many people are voting early that Elections Canada is struggling to keep up.  

In a retrospective of the spring federal election, Perrault said Monday that a record 44 per cent of voters cast their ballots before voting day on April 28, 2025. In other words, gone are the days when most voters waited until election day to cast their ballot.

Though he celebrated the fact the election saw the highest participation rate in 30 years (68 per cent), Perrault said that the constant increase in advance voting and special ballots combined with a series of recent snap elections have stretched his organization very thin.

The strain on Elections Canada was already visible during early voting days last spring, with some advance polling locations reporting wait times of more than one hour on April 18 .  

“The continued rise in popularity of advance polls shows an ongoing shift in voting habits. This marked trend has reached a point where it threatens the agency’s ability to meet the expectations of electors for this particular service, at least for general elections that are not held on a fixed date,” reads Perrault’s report on the last election published Monday.  

“This level of uptake for early voting presents service delivery challenges as the time available to recruit workers and secure polling places remains unchanged.”

Overall, the chief electoral officer said Elections Canada was up to the task of overseeing the federal election and said the results of the vote were legitimate. But he said issues are clouding the horizon and need to be addressed before the next election.

Perrault said there has been a steady growth in early voting over the last 25 years (when it was only 7.5 per cent) and the trend does not appear to be slowing. At the current rate, half of voters may cast an early ballot come next election.  

But since Canada is governed by a minority Parliament, a snap election could happen any time before the next fixed date in October 2029.  

A snap election exacerbates logistical challenges for Election Canada such as recruiting enough poll workers and signing leases for polling stations quickly, Perrault explained.  

“Not only are Canadians voting earlier, but the task of finding accessible and available polling locations and of finalizing the leases is increasingly different,” Perrault told reporters on Monday.  

“In this election, 60 per cent of voter information cards were delayed because of the difficulties in finalizing leases for landlords, all this puts more pressure on returning officers, who already have to deliver an increasing number of services,” he added.  

While campaigns are required to be anywhere between 37 to 51 days, the minority Liberals have called the shortest campaigns possible in both 2021 and 2025. But due to the rising popularity of early voting 11 days before the end of the campaign, Elections Canada is effectively working with nearly two weeks less time.

Perrault suggested one fix would be to either increase the minimum length of a federal campaign or have parties simply announce longer campaigns when calling a snap election.  

“I would like to see a minimum length, when we’re not in a fixed-date election scenario, that is a bit longer,” he said. He later cited anywhere between a few days to one week longer.  

He said increased pressure to prepare more special and early ballots faster also led to novel human errors that need to be addressed. For example, in the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne where the Liberals beat the Bloc Québécois by one vote, there were over 100 special ballots that were sent to voters with the wrong return postal code.

“The overall pressure to deliver a wider range of services in an effectively… shorter period of time increases the risk of errors,” said Canada’s top electoral officer.

Perrault also said his organization was conducting a full review of the “unacceptable” events in the northern Quebec community of Nunavik that prevented voters assigned to two electoral offices in Abitibi–Baie-James–Nunavik–Eeyou from casting a ballot.

Earlier this year, Perrault travelled to the riding to apologize to community members in person.

National Post

cnardi@postmedia.com

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