Mayoral candidate Olivia Chow says if she is elected to Toronto's top political office, she will make a request to trim down the number of days in the city's marathon municipal election campaign.

The former Trinity-Spadina NDP MP says the current 10-month campaign period is too long, and should be shorten to four months. She has proposed that registration for municipal offices open on the first business day after Canada Day.

"I just know that having an election period that’s 10 times longer than a normal federal or provincial campaign is just too much," Chow told CTV Toronto on Tuesday. "So that why four months is good."

This year, municipal campaigning in Toronto began on Jan. 2. More than 150 days have since passed, and there are still 140 days to go until voters in the city cast their ballots on Oct. 27.

"Having almost a full year of campaigning doesn’t benefit our city," Chow said in a statement released on Tuesday. "We elect federal governments in 36 days and provincial ones in 28. It shouldn’t take 299 days to choose a mayor."

Chow's idea has already won the approval from at least one rival campaign team. Coun. Doug Ford, who is the campaign manager for his brother’s re-election bid, says the 10-month campaign slog is unnecessary.

"I don’t think it takes the people of Toronto that long to figure out who they are voting for," he told reporters on Tuesday.

And Ford may be right.

According to some experts, a longer campaign period may not affect voter behaviour. Ryerson political science professor Myer Siemiatycki says most voters only start paying close attention to what candidates are saying a couple of months before the election date.

"It's really only over the last couple of months of a municipal campaign that the public starts to hone in on who their preferences are," Siemiatycki told CTV Toronto on Tuesday. "So in a way, the first seven or eight months are kind unnecessary preamble."

Mayoral candidate Karen Stintz, however, says a truncated campaign period would only favour those who are supported by a major political party. The former TTC chair said that although she "can fully appreciate the frustration that some Torontonians have with what seems to be never ending campaigning," a shortened campaign period would not be in the interest of local democracy.

"I say this because left-leaning candidates in the city have always worked closely with the NDP apparatus. Olivia Chow, as a former NDP member of parliament with close ties to both the provincial and federal NDP, arrived in Toronto’s mayoral race with a turn-key campaign machine," Stintz said in a statement on Tuesday. "That is a major reason why she has had some early success in this year's campaign."

In a Forum Research telephone poll conducted a day after Ford announced his plans to temporarily leave office, Chow was leading the pack of mayoral hopefuls.

According to the poll, Chow had the support of 33 per cent of respondents, followed by former Ontario PC party leader John Tory at 27 per cent. Incumbent Rob Ford ranked third at 22 per cent, while Karen Stintz and David Soknacki trailed behind the frontrunners, with six per cent and five per cent respectively.

The Forum poll surveyed 888 eligible Toronto voters and is considered accurate within three percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

If Chow is elected mayor, her plan would have be approved by city council, before it goes to the provincial government for consideration.

With a report from CTV Toronto's Natalie Johnson.