The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - Longest Ballot needs to stop - Poilievre says ＂This is a SCAM＂

00:00:00.480 Hey guys, Wyatt Claypool here.

00:00:03.200 It appears like the longest ballot committee has finally gone a bridge too far.

00:00:08.880 If you don't know what the longest ballot committee is yet, you probably recognize their

00:00:13.640 work in some of the recent elections where they have more than 100 candidates on a single

00:00:19.560 ballot making it very difficult to vote and making it even more difficult to count votes.

00:00:26.160 We have Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev coming out and calling it a scam.

00:00:31.760 And now we have other YouTubers doing investigative work into this.

00:00:36.320 Like Northern Perspectives, I very much look forward to what they come up with.

00:00:41.240 I'm not sure if the people who are doing this are doing it for money, they're just doing

00:00:45.280 it for laughs, but at the end of the day, it's wrong.

00:00:49.600 And I want to go over some of the information that's come out over the last 24 hours with

00:00:54.400 some of the people involved in the longest ballot committee organizing it, promoting it,

00:01:00.000 as well as putting their own names on the ballots, having trolls remorse and getting mad at people

00:01:05.440 for finally pushing back on them.

00:01:07.760 And I would like to say right at the start here, I do not condone anyone harassing the

00:01:13.280 people who are involved in the longest ballot committee, doing anything to them, doxing them,

00:01:19.440 trying to harass people they know.

00:01:22.160 That's all wrong.

00:01:23.360 Are they harassing voters effectively?

00:01:26.080 Yeah.

00:01:26.800 Basically making it very difficult for disabled people to vote, people who have sight issues, 0.99

00:01:31.920 or just making sure people stay home because, well, it's difficult to vote.

00:01:36.400 The longest ballot committee is targeting the Battle River Crowfoot by-election.

00:01:41.840 Now, is this going to prevent Pierre Polyev from winning?

00:01:45.200 No, he's easily going to win.

00:01:47.040 Did this change the results of Carlton?

00:01:50.160 No, I think Polyev lost fair and square there.

00:01:52.720 It was always a tighter riding, and then because he was a leader,

00:01:55.360 he didn't actually door knock his own riding because he has to be elsewhere.

00:01:58.640 And then a bunch of other fumbles in the election led to him losing his own seat.

00:02:03.200 But that doesn't mean what the longest ballot committee is doing is not anti-democratic.

00:02:08.240 And the hilarious thing is the people running it pretend that they care so much about democracy.

00:02:13.840 We care about proportional representation, 1.00

00:02:16.560 and we're jamming as many random idiots' names on the ballots 0.99

00:02:20.000 in order to promote the idea that we need a fairer electoral system. 1.00

00:02:25.200 No.

00:02:26.240 If anything, the rule changes that this is going to prompt

00:02:30.880 is to basically make it harder to get your name on a ballot,

00:02:34.080 which, frankly, I don't even exactly oppose, because I think we have had,

00:02:39.280 over the past couple of decades in Canada, a spate of perennial independent candidates

00:02:45.120 who always put their name on every single ballot in their local area,

00:02:48.880 not because they actually believe in anything, simply because, hey, it's free,

00:02:53.120 you know what I mean?

00:02:53.680 Or it's like a $1,000 deposit that you get back, your name gets to be on the ballot,

00:02:57.680 and I think it cheapens democracy overall when you're running not to actually even win.

00:03:02.560 But Polyev here says, this is talking about in the CBC article,

00:03:08.880 about what's going on in Bal River Crowfoot, it says, quote,

00:03:11.760 we have to take action because this is a scam.

00:03:14.880 It is unfair, it is unjust, and it must stop, Polyev said,

00:03:18.880 of the longest ballot protests that have been occurring in recent years,

00:03:22.320 including in Polyev's rioting this past election.

00:03:25.040 And again, what are these people actually doing?

00:03:27.280 This is what the ballots look like.

00:03:29.600 You'll have videos of these guys joking about how they are shorter than some of the ballots.

00:03:35.680 And it goes on, Polyev said there were a number of changes

00:03:38.400 that could prevent such protests from occurring,

00:03:40.720 but he specifically suggested requiring 1,000 signatures to run

00:03:44.320 and ensuring that voters can only sign one nomination form.

00:03:48.240 Quote, that would make it impossible for 200 people to go out

00:03:52.080 and have their names piled onto the candidates list.

00:03:54.480 Polyev told the crowd in Stettler last week.

00:03:57.600 He's been talking about this as he's been traveling around in Battle River Crowfoot

00:04:03.280 because so many people are annoyed by it.

00:04:05.520 I don't actually agree with Polyev's fixes.

00:04:07.840 I don't think you need 1,000 signatures.

00:04:09.920 It actually is honestly kind of hard to get someone to sign a paper.

00:04:13.280 And you could be an honest candidate with a real chance of winning,

00:04:16.240 but maybe an election was called on a snap,

00:04:19.360 and your team took a little bit to mobilize and maybe the cutoff for getting the signatures is next

00:04:24.400 week and some of your volunteers are just not very good at collecting the signatures.

00:04:28.320 You could be getting tons of votes, but 1,000 signatures that all have to be verified

00:04:33.120 is a bit much for a federal election where that's effectively almost getting like 1% of the population

00:04:38.720 to actually sign your papers.

00:04:40.320 I think it just needs to be 200 signatures.

00:04:43.360 One person could do that in two to four days, easy, and maybe have to put down a certain amount

00:04:49.120 of money.

00:04:49.520 I even don't mind the rules that Japan has for some of their elections in places like Tokyo,

00:04:54.960 where you put down a few thousand dollars.

00:04:57.680 You don't get that money back, but you get guaranteed advertising.

00:05:01.200 You get guaranteed literature delivery to voters so that they at least encounter

00:05:06.240 something about you during the election.

00:05:08.160 Basically, put your money where your mouth is.

00:05:10.640 If you're going to run, do it seriously.

00:05:13.920 But I want to get into some of the stuff that's been occurring more recently on social media.

00:05:19.280 Because again, I'm going to say it again, don't harass any of the people doing this stuff. 1.00

00:05:23.120 It's stupid. 0.99

00:05:24.160 I know that this one guy involved in it, Donovan, had like someone apparently throw a rock through 1.00

00:05:29.840 his window.

00:05:31.120 Some people he knows were being harassed for just being associated with them.

00:05:35.040 That's wrong.

00:05:36.320 At the same time, and I'm not then trying to excuse and say, but it's actually okay.

00:05:40.640 Totally wrong.

00:05:41.360 Don't harass anybody.

00:05:42.560 But I find it kind of odd how somebody who is openly making the lives of people harder

00:05:49.440 finds it annoying that people are making his life harder or, you know, harassing him because,

00:05:55.040 you know, it's kind of harassment for harassment.

00:05:59.280 Both of it's wrong and it should be ended.

00:06:01.280 And I don't think that what the longest ballot committee is doing is then enabling you to

00:06:06.000 do it because it's one for one.

00:06:07.760 I'm just saying that, my goodness, how did you not expect that something like this would

00:06:12.800 eventually happen?

00:06:14.000 Again, making people in wheelchairs have to try and figure out who they're going to vote 0.99

00:06:18.240 for on a more than a meter long ballot in which it's kind of hard to maneuver it if you're

00:06:24.080 in a wheelchair at a sit down desk.

00:06:27.040 But let's go on to some of the, I have some of the stuff bookmarked that I want to look at.

00:06:31.520 And Vesper has been doing a really good job looking into some of this stuff.

00:06:37.120 And Northern Perspectives is coming up with a video.

00:06:40.160 They have this email from one of the organizers.

00:06:43.040 And it's kind of telling just how childish some of these people are.

00:06:47.280 But again, what I want to do here is highlight some of the information that Vesper came across

00:06:52.800 that debunks the notion that these people actually care about democracy,

00:06:57.680 that they're doing this to promote proportional representation.

00:07:00.480 Again, obviously, this does not promote proportional representation.

00:07:05.680 Jamming a bunch of people's names on a ballot does not then equal maybe everyone will then

00:07:10.640 want it so that if you get, you know, a certain percentage of the vote in a certain province,

00:07:15.280 you get that portion of seats.

00:07:17.200 Jamming a bunch of names on a ballot and that are two completely different things that do not

00:07:21.920 cross paths at all in terms of motive or outcome.

00:07:25.760 But Vesper here says, so Thomas Chawasiuk, I don't know how to pronounce that last name,

00:07:31.440 and Kieran, Sebastian, Coe Rhino, Donovan Erickson, who's associated with the Rhino Party in 2018,

00:07:39.760 targeted Andrew Scheer and now Pierre Polyev and Carlton and Crowfoot.

00:07:43.360 They were aiming for the Guinness World Record for a ballot in 2018.

00:07:48.240 Now, doesn't that feel a bit odd that their modern justification for doing this is proportional

00:07:54.240 representation, but previously they were doing this for the Rhinoceros Party, which is a joke

00:08:00.880 party that basically just runs on nonsensical platforms and runs around basically pulling

00:08:07.040 pranks and doing election jokes.

00:08:09.520 You can't say that, well, no, no, no, we're serious pranksters.

00:08:13.680 No, you're just pranksters. 0.97

00:08:15.600 You're just annoying.

00:08:17.360 Again, this is actually hurting democracy.

00:08:20.240 I love the idea, again, we want to increase democracy.

00:08:24.480 We want to strengthen democracy.

00:08:26.800 So in order to promote proportional representation, let's harass voters.

00:08:31.600 Let's make it so that election results take hours longer.

00:08:35.040 The government has to pay more money to hold a race because they have to actually pay people 0.99

00:08:40.720 overtime for having to count ballots into like 1, 2, 3, 4 a.m. 0.52

00:08:46.320 Because these things are ridiculous to count.

00:08:48.480 You have to go find the X on a giant ballot.

00:08:51.200 And yeah, while you'll probably figure out the four or five bubbles that people are most

00:08:56.000 likely to fill in, you're eventually going to come across a lot of the ones where someone

00:08:59.680 just gave up and just crossed one of the names.

00:09:01.920 And you're going to have to go find which of the 120 bubbles that is filled in. 1.00

00:09:07.600 This is just stupid. 0.99

00:09:09.920 They are basically, again, they are cheapening democracy. 1.00

00:09:14.240 And this is, again, why I think that someone putting their name forward should be a serious

00:09:18.560 matter.

00:09:19.280 And I think that you should actually have the rules reflect how serious it is.

00:09:23.040 It's not restricting free speech or restricting democratic rights to say that you have to have

00:09:28.640 200 signatures and you have to put $2,000 down and you have to do a few other things in order to run.

00:09:34.720 If you are a serious candidate with people backing you, none of this should be difficult.

00:09:40.240 If you don't have those things, I'm sorry, you're not going to win.

00:09:44.160 Again, I noted this on social media yesterday.

00:09:47.280 If you actually go back before 2000, you will find far more out of the box, small parties and

00:09:53.520 independent candidates winning elections.

00:09:56.720 And part of it was because when someone did put their name forward as an independent,

00:10:00.800 not only were they a serious person, but not many people did that.

00:10:04.640 So when you did that, it kind of got people's attention.

00:10:06.880 Well, why is this, you know, Thomas Dolby deciding that he wants to run?

00:10:12.320 And you would be able to make a more fulsome pitch simply because people actually want to

00:10:16.720 know why aren't you running for the conservatives or the liberals in this particular writing?

00:10:20.800 Because back in the day, ballots usually were only two names.

00:10:23.840 You know, CCF, you know, the precursor, the NDP came around, became three names,

00:10:28.560 social credit, four names.

00:10:30.160 And then you started just having small parties that run in every writing that aren't actually

00:10:35.280 trying to win and they don't have a clear message and independents who are perennial candidates.

00:10:40.320 Like one guy I get annoyed with is Larry Heather, who is always running for the Christian

00:10:45.600 Heritage Party in one writing or running for mayor.

00:10:48.400 And it's like, stop, you're not doing anything with this.

00:10:51.280 If anything, you are cheapening the idea of somebody else running because now the ballot

00:10:55.600 gets to be 32 names long, full of people who didn't even take five seconds to even go out

00:11:00.960 and actually campaign.

00:11:01.920 Just throw your name up and arrogantly act like, oh, well, voters should select me if

00:11:05.360 they want someone good in office. 1.00

00:11:06.640 Well, they're not because you're an idiot, because you don't know what you're doing 1.00

00:11:09.680 and you're just doing this for ego. 1.00

00:11:11.360 And I think that egos and pranks should not be involved in electoral politics.

00:11:16.880 When I say egos, obviously politicians are some of the most ego driven people on the planet.

00:11:21.440 But if you're just putting your name on the ballot for ego reasons,

00:11:24.480 and you're not actually going to campaign, you should get fined.

00:11:27.680 Or if you put money down, a thousand dollar deposit down, they shouldn't give it back

00:11:31.840 unless you get at least like 500 votes.

00:11:34.720 You should at least drive 500 people out or you don't get your money back.

00:11:38.160 Because yeah, you weren't serious and the system had to do a bunch of extra work

00:11:43.520 to file your paperwork to make the ballots longer for you who aren't actually doing anything serious

00:11:49.200 here. So my solution to all this, 200 signatures, $1,000 non-refundable down payment that you only

00:11:58.320 get back if you get a certain amount of votes. And then also, I think we just also need to shame

00:12:04.480 people a little bit more who are running for no real reason. Again, I look forward to the Northern

00:12:10.320 Perspectives expose on this. If you hadn't seen it before, it's not just the rhinoceros party that's

00:12:16.800 involved. Also, one of the main people who's involved in organizing this stuff has a history

00:12:21.280 in the Marxist-Leninist party to the point where the Marxist-Leninist party was promoting what the

00:12:26.400 longest ballot committee is doing. And I had Donovan Erickson get really mad at me. I don't even mind

00:12:31.840 the guy. I thought he was funny at the very start, but once the joke goes three and four and five

00:12:38.960 by-elections and general election ballots deep, and these things start getting just absolutely

00:12:43.840 ridiculous, the joke wore off. The joke wore off quite a while ago. And yeah, I'm not shocked that

00:12:50.400 you're now getting pushback. But what I want to look at, and Donovan was mad at me for pointing

00:12:55.280 this out, is that somebody should look into who is funding the longest ballot committee, whether the

00:13:00.320 Marxist-Leninist or rhino party are having money put through them so they can give people tax credits 0.83

00:13:05.200 in order to pay some of the people organizing stuff. If nobody's being paid like Donovan says,

00:13:09.520 well, that's just sad. It's just more pathetic that you're doing this for nothing just to make 0.97

00:13:14.800 people's lives worse for a message that you're only cheapening by doing this. And also, if Donovan 0.98

00:13:21.120 was also saying that he knows people aren't being paid, doesn't that make him a key organizer?

00:13:25.680 I start to care less that he doesn't like people like annoying him or harassing him or whatever.

00:13:32.960 Again, don't do that stuff. But my caring starts to go down once you are intimately involved in this

00:13:38.640 and not just one of the several joke candidates who signs up every time. The fact that you know

00:13:43.120 no one's being paid is a little concerning to me on how deep you are involved in screwing with people

00:13:49.120 at the ballot box. But anyways, again, will this affect any racist results? I don't think

00:13:54.240 substantially it will. I think they are trying to embarrass Polyev in this by-election where,

00:13:58.800 you know, people know it's a default conservative riding and maybe if they hear the ballots 120 names

00:14:03.280 long, they are not going to show up. But the people who want to embarrass Polyev will show up

00:14:07.680 in order to reduce his margin of victory. I think that's partially the motivation in this case.

00:14:12.400 And again, I think it just became a dumb joke that needs to be curbed. They have done this to 0.65

00:14:17.440 liberals in the past. They did this in La Salle, Marde, Verdun. They did this in Toronto Center where

00:14:22.480 actually the conservative ended up winning that by-election. So again, it's not like they're doing this

00:14:27.040 to affect specific races always on behalf of one party or another. But this is obviously an attack

00:14:35.440 on democracy to make it this ridiculous in order for people to vote. Imagine all the old people 1.00

00:14:41.040 who don't really want to have to find the name of the candidate in a 120 bubble sheet. They just want

00:14:47.760 to vote for Polyev. They just want to vote for Bonnie Crinkley in Battle River Crowfoot. And they just can't

00:14:53.760 find the name. And they just give up because the thing's 120 names long. And maybe you don't already

00:14:59.200 have the best eyesight. You don't have the best mobility. So you don't really like moving the

00:15:02.240 ballot to go find the specific name. But why did it's alphabetical order? Well, some people aren't

00:15:06.720 going to clue into that right away. And it's going to take them a while. But anyways, so that should be

00:15:11.840 it for me today, guys. Make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment,

00:15:15.600 and I will see you guys next time.

00:15:25.040 you

The National Telegraph - Wyatt Claypool - July 20, 2025

Longest Ballot needs to stop - Poilievre says ＂This is a SCAM＂

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