A Canadian man, Félix-Antoine Hamel, has made history by receiving zero votes in a contested federal election, in a deliberate protest against the lack of electoral reforms in the country.
Hamel, who ran as a candidate in a recent by-election in Toronto, told CBC News: "When I saw the result, I was like: 'Well, I am the true unity candidate. Everyone agrees not to vote for me.'"
The Longest Ballot Committee, an electoral reform advocacy group, approached Hamel to run as a candidate. He lives in Montreal, hundreds of miles away from the electoral district, and was unable to vote for himself.
Hamel was among 84 candidates who listed their names for the by-election. While six other candidates received two votes each, Hamel was the only candidate who did not receive a single vote.
In 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised that the federal election that year would be the last under the first-past-the-post system. However, after his party won a landslide majority, he abandoned the promise.
Hamel expressed satisfaction with bringing attention to electoral reform and participating in a fair democratic process. He highlighted his concern about the decline of democracies globally, saying: "As long as I have the right and the privilege to get zero votes in an election, then we are truly in a democracy."
Previous federal elections have seen zero-vote results, but in those cases, the candidates were running unopposed and were thus acclaimed as winners. Hamel’s feat marks the first time someone has won zero votes – and lost.
"I’m one of the last people that would be expected to make Canadian history in any way," he said.
