'True Unity' Candidate Makes History With Zero Votes

Montreal man couldn't vote for himself in federal election in Toronto district
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 28, 2024 12:29 PM CDT
'True Unity' Candidate Makes History With Zero Votes
A portion of Monday's longest-ever ballot.   (Elections Canada)

"I'm one of the last people that would be expected to make Canadian history in any way," says Félix-Antoine Hamel. But the 45-year-old musician made his way into the record books on Monday, when he became the first candidate to score zero votes in a contested federal election. Hamel was one of dozens of candidates running in a by-election in a Toronto district as a protest against Canada's first-past-the-post electoral system, the Guardian reports. Six candidates on the 84-candidate ballot received two votes but only Hamel—who lives in Montreal and couldn't vote for himself—received zero.

"When I saw the result, I was like, 'Well, I am the true unity candidate. Everyone agrees not to vote for me,'" Hamel tells the CBC. He says he put his name forward after he was approached by a friend who works with the Longest Ballot Committee, which advocates for electoral reform and proportional representation. They succeeded in making the ballot in the Toronto-St. Paul's district the longest in Canadian history.

Hamel tells the CBC that he was glad to raise awareness of electoral reform. "As long as I have the right and the privilege to get zero votes in an election, then we are truly in a democracy," he says.

  • After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was elected in 2015, he abandoned a promise to bring in electoral reform, the Guardian notes. In a blow to his government, the by-election Monday was narrowly won by a Conservative candidate, flipping a seat that had been held by Trudeau's Liberal party for more than 30 years.
(More Canada stories.)

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