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 agency said it's recruiting more workers to count votes cast during advance polls, and is also planning to start counting those votes before polls close on election day.

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