Longest Ballot needs to stop - Poilievre says ＂This is a SCAM＂
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Summary
The Longest Ballot Committee is targeting the Battle Riverbank by-election in the riding of Battle River-Crowfoot, Alberta. They have more than 100 candidates on a single ballot, making it very difficult to vote and making it even more difficult to count votes. Federal Conservative Party Leader Pierre Polyev has come out and called it a scam, and now other YouTubers are doing investigative work into it.
Transcript
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It appears like the longest ballot committee has finally gone a bridge too far.
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If you don't know what the longest ballot committee is yet, you probably recognize their
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work in some of the recent elections where they have more than 100 candidates on a single
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ballot making it very difficult to vote and making it even more difficult to count votes.
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We have Federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Polyev coming out and calling it a scam.
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And now we have other YouTubers doing investigative work into this.
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Like Northern Perspectives, I very much look forward to what they come up with.
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I'm not sure if the people who are doing this are doing it for money, they're just doing
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it for laughs, but at the end of the day, it's wrong.
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And I want to go over some of the information that's come out over the last 24 hours with
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some of the people involved in the longest ballot committee organizing it, promoting it,
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as well as putting their own names on the ballots, having trolls remorse and getting mad at people
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And I would like to say right at the start here, I do not condone anyone harassing the
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people who are involved in the longest ballot committee, doing anything to them, doxing them,
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Basically making it very difficult for disabled people to vote, people who have sight issues,
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or just making sure people stay home because, well, it's difficult to vote.
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The longest ballot committee is targeting the Battle River Crowfoot by-election.
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Now, is this going to prevent Pierre Polyev from winning?
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It was always a tighter riding, and then because he was a leader,
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he didn't actually door knock his own riding because he has to be elsewhere.
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And then a bunch of other fumbles in the election led to him losing his own seat.
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But that doesn't mean what the longest ballot committee is doing is not anti-democratic.
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And the hilarious thing is the people running it pretend that they care so much about democracy.
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and we're jamming as many random idiots' names on the ballots
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in order to promote the idea that we need a fairer electoral system.
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If anything, the rule changes that this is going to prompt
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is to basically make it harder to get your name on a ballot,
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which, frankly, I don't even exactly oppose, because I think we have had,
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over the past couple of decades in Canada, a spate of perennial independent candidates
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who always put their name on every single ballot in their local area,
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not because they actually believe in anything, simply because, hey, it's free,
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Or it's like a $1,000 deposit that you get back, your name gets to be on the ballot,
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and I think it cheapens democracy overall when you're running not to actually even win.
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But Polyev here says, this is talking about in the CBC article,
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about what's going on in Bal River Crowfoot, it says, quote,
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It is unfair, it is unjust, and it must stop, Polyev said,
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of the longest ballot protests that have been occurring in recent years,
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including in Polyev's rioting this past election.
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And again, what are these people actually doing?
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You'll have videos of these guys joking about how they are shorter than some of the ballots.
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And it goes on, Polyev said there were a number of changes
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that could prevent such protests from occurring,
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but he specifically suggested requiring 1,000 signatures to run
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and ensuring that voters can only sign one nomination form.
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Quote, that would make it impossible for 200 people to go out
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and have their names piled onto the candidates list.
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He's been talking about this as he's been traveling around in Battle River Crowfoot
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It actually is honestly kind of hard to get someone to sign a paper.
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And you could be an honest candidate with a real chance of winning,
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and your team took a little bit to mobilize and maybe the cutoff for getting the signatures is next
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week and some of your volunteers are just not very good at collecting the signatures.
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You could be getting tons of votes, but 1,000 signatures that all have to be verified
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is a bit much for a federal election where that's effectively almost getting like 1% of the population
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One person could do that in two to four days, easy, and maybe have to put down a certain amount
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I even don't mind the rules that Japan has for some of their elections in places like Tokyo,
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You don't get that money back, but you get guaranteed advertising.
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You get guaranteed literature delivery to voters so that they at least encounter
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But I want to get into some of the stuff that's been occurring more recently on social media.
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Because again, I'm going to say it again, don't harass any of the people doing this stuff.
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I know that this one guy involved in it, Donovan, had like someone apparently throw a rock through
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Some people he knows were being harassed for just being associated with them.
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At the same time, and I'm not then trying to excuse and say, but it's actually okay.
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But I find it kind of odd how somebody who is openly making the lives of people harder
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finds it annoying that people are making his life harder or, you know, harassing him because,
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you know, it's kind of harassment for harassment.
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And I don't think that what the longest ballot committee is doing is then enabling you to
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I'm just saying that, my goodness, how did you not expect that something like this would
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Again, making people in wheelchairs have to try and figure out who they're going to vote
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for on a more than a meter long ballot in which it's kind of hard to maneuver it if you're
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But let's go on to some of the, I have some of the stuff bookmarked that I want to look at.
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And Vesper has been doing a really good job looking into some of this stuff.
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And Northern Perspectives is coming up with a video.
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They have this email from one of the organizers.
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And it's kind of telling just how childish some of these people are.
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But again, what I want to do here is highlight some of the information that Vesper came across
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that debunks the notion that these people actually care about democracy,
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that they're doing this to promote proportional representation.
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Again, obviously, this does not promote proportional representation.
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Jamming a bunch of people's names on a ballot does not then equal maybe everyone will then
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want it so that if you get, you know, a certain percentage of the vote in a certain province,
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Jamming a bunch of names on a ballot and that are two completely different things that do not
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cross paths at all in terms of motive or outcome.
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But Vesper here says, so Thomas Chawasiuk, I don't know how to pronounce that last name,
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and Kieran, Sebastian, Coe Rhino, Donovan Erickson, who's associated with the Rhino Party in 2018,
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targeted Andrew Scheer and now Pierre Polyev and Carlton and Crowfoot.
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They were aiming for the Guinness World Record for a ballot in 2018.
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Now, doesn't that feel a bit odd that their modern justification for doing this is proportional
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representation, but previously they were doing this for the Rhinoceros Party, which is a joke
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party that basically just runs on nonsensical platforms and runs around basically pulling
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You can't say that, well, no, no, no, we're serious pranksters.
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I love the idea, again, we want to increase democracy.
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So in order to promote proportional representation, let's harass voters.
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Let's make it so that election results take hours longer.
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The government has to pay more money to hold a race because they have to actually pay people
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overtime for having to count ballots into like 1, 2, 3, 4 a.m.
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And yeah, while you'll probably figure out the four or five bubbles that people are most
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likely to fill in, you're eventually going to come across a lot of the ones where someone
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just gave up and just crossed one of the names.
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And you're going to have to go find which of the 120 bubbles that is filled in.
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They are basically, again, they are cheapening democracy.
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And this is, again, why I think that someone putting their name forward should be a serious
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And I think that you should actually have the rules reflect how serious it is.
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It's not restricting free speech or restricting democratic rights to say that you have to have
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200 signatures and you have to put $2,000 down and you have to do a few other things in order to run.
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If you are a serious candidate with people backing you, none of this should be difficult.
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If you don't have those things, I'm sorry, you're not going to win.
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If you actually go back before 2000, you will find far more out of the box, small parties and
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And part of it was because when someone did put their name forward as an independent,
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not only were they a serious person, but not many people did that.
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So when you did that, it kind of got people's attention.
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Well, why is this, you know, Thomas Dolby deciding that he wants to run?
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And you would be able to make a more fulsome pitch simply because people actually want to
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know why aren't you running for the conservatives or the liberals in this particular writing?
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Because back in the day, ballots usually were only two names.
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You know, CCF, you know, the precursor, the NDP came around, became three names,
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And then you started just having small parties that run in every writing that aren't actually
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trying to win and they don't have a clear message and independents who are perennial candidates.
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Like one guy I get annoyed with is Larry Heather, who is always running for the Christian
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Heritage Party in one writing or running for mayor.
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And it's like, stop, you're not doing anything with this.
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If anything, you are cheapening the idea of somebody else running because now the ballot
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gets to be 32 names long, full of people who didn't even take five seconds to even go out
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Just throw your name up and arrogantly act like, oh, well, voters should select me if
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Well, they're not because you're an idiot, because you don't know what you're doing
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And I think that egos and pranks should not be involved in electoral politics.
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When I say egos, obviously politicians are some of the most ego driven people on the planet.
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But if you're just putting your name on the ballot for ego reasons,
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and you're not actually going to campaign, you should get fined.
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Or if you put money down, a thousand dollar deposit down, they shouldn't give it back
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You should at least drive 500 people out or you don't get your money back.
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Because yeah, you weren't serious and the system had to do a bunch of extra work
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to file your paperwork to make the ballots longer for you who aren't actually doing anything serious
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here. So my solution to all this, 200 signatures, $1,000 non-refundable down payment that you only
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get back if you get a certain amount of votes. And then also, I think we just also need to shame
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people a little bit more who are running for no real reason. Again, I look forward to the Northern
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Perspectives expose on this. If you hadn't seen it before, it's not just the rhinoceros party that's
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involved. Also, one of the main people who's involved in organizing this stuff has a history
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in the Marxist-Leninist party to the point where the Marxist-Leninist party was promoting what the
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longest ballot committee is doing. And I had Donovan Erickson get really mad at me. I don't even mind
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the guy. I thought he was funny at the very start, but once the joke goes three and four and five
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by-elections and general election ballots deep, and these things start getting just absolutely
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ridiculous, the joke wore off. The joke wore off quite a while ago. And yeah, I'm not shocked that
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you're now getting pushback. But what I want to look at, and Donovan was mad at me for pointing
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this out, is that somebody should look into who is funding the longest ballot committee, whether the
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Marxist-Leninist or rhino party are having money put through them so they can give people tax credits
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in order to pay some of the people organizing stuff. If nobody's being paid like Donovan says,
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well, that's just sad. It's just more pathetic that you're doing this for nothing just to make
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people's lives worse for a message that you're only cheapening by doing this. And also, if Donovan
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was also saying that he knows people aren't being paid, doesn't that make him a key organizer?
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I start to care less that he doesn't like people like annoying him or harassing him or whatever.
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Again, don't do that stuff. But my caring starts to go down once you are intimately involved in this
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and not just one of the several joke candidates who signs up every time. The fact that you know
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no one's being paid is a little concerning to me on how deep you are involved in screwing with people
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at the ballot box. But anyways, again, will this affect any racist results? I don't think
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substantially it will. I think they are trying to embarrass Polyev in this by-election where,
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you know, people know it's a default conservative riding and maybe if they hear the ballots 120 names
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long, they are not going to show up. But the people who want to embarrass Polyev will show up
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in order to reduce his margin of victory. I think that's partially the motivation in this case.
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And again, I think it just became a dumb joke that needs to be curbed. They have done this to
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liberals in the past. They did this in La Salle, Marde, Verdun. They did this in Toronto Center where
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actually the conservative ended up winning that by-election. So again, it's not like they're doing this
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to affect specific races always on behalf of one party or another. But this is obviously an attack
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on democracy to make it this ridiculous in order for people to vote. Imagine all the old people
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who don't really want to have to find the name of the candidate in a 120 bubble sheet. They just want
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to vote for Polyev. They just want to vote for Bonnie Crinkley in Battle River Crowfoot. And they just can't
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find the name. And they just give up because the thing's 120 names long. And maybe you don't already
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have the best eyesight. You don't have the best mobility. So you don't really like moving the
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ballot to go find the specific name. But why did it's alphabetical order? Well, some people aren't
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going to clue into that right away. And it's going to take them a while. But anyways, so that should be
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it for me today, guys. Make sure to like the video, subscribe to the channel, leave a comment,