When it comes to politicians making twits of themselves on Twitter, Max Seltzer believes we are living in a golden age.

“We’re witnessing one of the first generations of election candidates who said whatever unfiltered thoughts popped into their heads on social media,” says Seltzer, editor of The True North Times, a comedy website devoted to oddball Canadian politics.

Political parties, meanwhile, haven’t perfected the process of reviewing their candidates’ self-destructive social-media musings.

The result: A perfect storm of wannabe MPs revealed as tweeting twerps and Facebooking fools.

“We may never see anything like it on this scale again,” says Seltzer.

Seltzer’s website, operated by a tech-savvy crew of university students, just forced the resignation of Liberal candidate Cheryl Thomas in Victoria by revealing her Facebook posts.

Thomas called Muslim mosques “brainwashing stations” in one post. In another, she wrote: “Santa has to be white!!! You can’t have a brown guy with a beard sneaking into your house in the middle of the night! You’d be calling the bomb squad!”

“We’re not out to destroy people’s careers,” Seltzer said. “But we do think what these candidates say on social media is one of the best reflections of who they really are.”

Agreed. But Thomas’s resignation now creates a lot of potential confusion on election day.

It’s too late to take her name off the ballot, and Elections Canada says there’s no legal way to warn voters at polling stations that the Liberal candidate is actually not running anymore.

Ridiculous. They should print new ballots if they have to. Because who knows how many more candidates will sabotage their own campaigns between now and election day on Oct. 19?

Just consider a few of the dozens across Canada who have experienced career-limiting bozo eruptions:

ALEX JOHNSTONE

If there’s one thing worse than making a joke about the Holocaust, it’s revealing your appalling ignorance of the Holocaust as an excuse.

Johnstone, an Ontario NDP candidate, joked on Facebook in 2008 that electric fences around the Auschwitz death camp looked “phallic.” Asked recently for an explanation, she said didn’t know what Auschwitz was “up until today.”

Johnstone has now taken a “temporary leave of absence” as vice-chair of the Hamilton School Board but, incredibly, is still running to be an MP.

JERRY BANCE

Everyone knows about the appliance-repairman-turned-Conservative-candidate caught on a hidden camera peeing into a customer’s coffee mug.

The crazy thing is the original footage of Bance’s coffee-cup capers were originally aired on the CBC TV show Marketplace three years ago.

Nobody — not even the Conservatives’ exhaustive candidate-screening process — caught on.

RYAN LEEF

The Yukon Conservative candidate, a former bantamweight cage fighter, confronted and handcuffed a petite socialist playwright he caught damaging his campaign signs.

Leef, dressed in camouflage, was installing a motion-detecting surveillance camera to monitor his signs along the Alaska Highway when he spotted Carrie Boles defacing his signs on a dark and stormy night.

Boles said Leef emerged from the woods, yelled “citizen’s arrest,” put her in an armlock, slapped her in handcuffs and called police.

Leef said he was carrying the cuffs in case he caught the person who’d been vandalizing his signs. Boles was let off with a warning and Leef has returned to traditional campaigning, wishing to put the “odd” story behind him.

MARIA MANNA

The former 9/11 “truther” resigned as a Vancouver Island Liberal candidate over Facebook posts that questioned the official account of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“Today we remember the tragedy of 9/11,” Manna posted in 2013. “Today most people will continue to believe the lie, and again, THEY continue to win. Thank God I know the truth!”

Manna said she has “moved on” from her 9/11 skepticism, but still felt her past opinions had created a distraction for her campaign.

TIM DUTAUD

Billing himself as “The Unicaller” on YouTube, this actor-turned-Conservative-candidate in Toronto shot videos of himself making crank phone calls dressed in a hoodie and sunglasses.

In one video, he pretends to be a developmentally disabled person calling a travel company. In another, he calls a customer-service line with questions about Viagra and pretends to have an orgasm.

Laugh riot. He quit his campaign. No word on whether he’s gone back to acting.

VIRGINIE PROVOST

Asked on a social-media site what emergency supplies she’d keep handy during a nuclear attack, the Bloc Québécois candidate replied: “My phone, a penis and lots of chips.”

The Bloc said Provost made an unfortunate “error” but stood by their candidate.

Provost later changed her answer, saying her in-case-of-nuke kit would now include “a coffee machine, the party platform and all the voters of Mégantic-L’Érable.”

CHRIS LLOYD

This Montreal-area Conservative candidate quit after acknowledging his campaign was actually “performance art” designed to embarrass the party.

Lloyd’s career as an avant-garde artist working in the medium of politics traced back to the 1990s, when he used letters written to then prime minister Jean Chrétien to construct papier-mâché sculptures of a goalie mask, the Stanley Cup and other hockey-themed objects.

This work impressed the local Conservative association, which didn’t catch on to his ruse even after he mailed the party a cheque for $30 billion to buy fighter jets.

The jig was finally up after the emergence of a recorded speech at an arts centre in which Lloyd admitted he created a politician’s “persona” as a joke on the governing party.

The joke is on the Conservatives, indeed.

And the Liberals. And the NDP. And the Greens, who have had their share of kooky candidates, too.

“It’s all been great material,” said Seltzer, whose political comedy website has soared in popularity after revealing much of this mayhem.

“We hope it gets more young people engaged, activated and interested in politics,” he said.

If that happens, some of these candidates may have done the country a favour.

msmyth@theprovince.com

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