Nominations close Monday at 2:00 p.m. local-time for the 4 by-election ridings. Candidates must present completed nomination papers (opens a PDF file), an endorsement letter signed by their party leader if running for a registered political party, an official agent and a witness, the name of an auditor who has agreed to audit their books, and a cheque for the $1,000 deposit, which is returned once their financial reports are filed after the election.

The nomination papers are interesting to take a look at, if you've never seen them before, and contain all the rules about running, who can run, the kinds of oaths they have to take, the way they're allowed to call themselves on the ballot, and all kinds of other details about the process of how the nomination papers get reviewed and approved.

The one detail they don't cover is the number of signatures required on the papers to be successfully nominated, which is because it varies. In most ridings, candidates must present the signatures of 100 electors from that riding (i.e., eligible to vote, and normally resident within the riding boundaries). However in the large and remote ridings listed in Schedule 3 of the Elections Act, just 50 signatures are required.

Once the nomination papers are filed, the Deputy District Returning Officer (DRO) for that riding reviews them to ensure everything is in order and that all the signatures are from eligible voters in that riding. If not, the candidate's nomination will be rejected, and this has certainly happened in recent history: for example the 2000 Progressive Conservative candidate in Regina – Lumsden – Lake Centre, SK did not meet this threshold and was not confirmed as a candidate. (The story goes that there were dead people names on the papers, but the DRO had attended one of the individuals' funeral, and began to investigate further.) These things can be consequential; for example in this case, the incumbent was defeated by a narrow margin with only 3 candidates on the ballot.

[UPDATE: a reader who would know, wrote to correct my terminology above. DROs are the Deputy Returning Officers who sit at the polling stations next to the Poll Clerks, while District Returning Officers are called ROs. Colloquially we always called returning officers DROs when I worked on campaigns Anyways, that's who I meant to say. In fact, as the reader further points out, that person may not be the individual who actually does the checking either, but is in any event the person responsible for ensuring it happens.]

DROs Returning Officers have 48 hours to verify and confirm the details in the nomination papers, and then Elections Canada releases the names of the candidates who will appear on the ballot, and sets the parties' spending limits for the by-election campaign, which depend on how many candidates each is running.

Note that candidates have until 5:00 p.m. Monday to withdraw their name from the ballot. Candidates resigning after that point will still appear on the ballot (under the name of the party endorsing them on their nomination papers), as we all remember from several examples in the last campaign.

You will notice that Elections Canada has candidates already listed for each riding on their by-election website right now. These are the lists of "registered" candidates; basically candidates who have already contacted the DRO to indicate their intentions to run, whether they have nomination papers completed or not.

On this basis, we can say that the neoRhino.ca candidate Gabrielle Anctil is now a registered candidate according to the list for Hochelaga, and perennial candidate John Turmel has registered to run as an independent candidate in that riding as well.

--------------

I've also been making some database updates for general election nominations, but blogging is light at present, to permit me the time to delve into a new topic for a future Pundits' Guide project.

Thanks to everyone who has been staying in touch to keep us apprised of candidate developments.

Labels: 41st General Election Nominations, Nov 9 2009 By-elections