Low bar of entry for election candidates is a problem for democracy.

The author brings up some good points. Most of the candidates in the last election ranged from naive and inexperienced up to completely delusional, almost to the point where you question their mental health.

A small number of signatures from all (or most) the wards seems reasonable. In order to achieve that requirement, a mayoral candidate is probably going to need a team of a few volunteers to them out. So it's a significant burden to "lone wolf" people, but is probably pretty easily achievable to legitimate candidates.

Although it's a bit more of a touchier subject, a deposit that would be refundable only if you got a small portion of the votes might be reasonable. However, I don't this would be as effective. Some of these candidates are incredibly delusional about their level of support, so they might just hand over the money and run anyway because they figure they will have no issues getting the required number of votes. Now you have two problems: you still have a unreasonable candidate in the race, and you just took a significant amount of money from someone with mental health issues who probably needs the money.

/r/ottawa Thread