So, we voted today (Canadian election)

Politics & Elections
1

Mrs P is going to be out of town on Election Day, so we voted today in the Advance Poll.

Voting was in the gym of a local school. Not very busy. Two women greeted us with “Hello/Bonjour” and told us to line up behind a mom with two little kids ahead of us, and a guy by himself.

Two older guys were sitting off to the side. I assume they were the scrutineers for two of the parties. They were chatting. When you’ve been working on campaigns for a while, you tend to know the guys for the other parties and get to be friendly with them.

Procedure was simple when my turn came. Gave my voter card and driver licence to the Deputy Returning Officer, who looked at them and then handed them to the Poll Clerk.

Poll Clerk looked me up in the Big Book o’Voters, and carefully crossed my name off, using a ruler and a pen provided by Elections Canada.

DRO gave me my ballot, carefully folded. I took it to the table and unfolded it behind the cardboard screen. Was surprised by the number of names on it. In addition to the Tory, the Grit, the NDP and the Green, there was also the new Peoples’ Party an independent, and the National Citizens Alliance. We’ve had pamphlets and door knockers from the Grit, Tory, NDP and Green over the past month, but the others three I hadn’t heard about.

Carefully marked my choice, using the Elections Canada superthick pencil, then double-checked to make sure i marked it correctly. Carefully folded it up again and took it to the DRO. She tore off te counterfoil with her initials and gave it back to me. She took the pad of paper off the top of the ballot box and I put my ballot in, with a good thump to make sure it fell in.

Then Mrs Piper and I left. Whole thing took 10 minutes.

Now we wait to the 21st for the main day and ballots to be counted.

2

The complete and opposite story of anyone voting in North Carolina. :smiley: Glad you have a good system! Hope it turns out well for Canada. I love the place.

3

I voted today in my Vancouver Island riding as well. My experience was very similar except I never received a voter registration card and had to do an extra step of having a piece of paper filled out to add me. No matter - my driver license address was sufficient for that and I was still in and out in less than 10 minutes. There was one person in front of me in line - I also enjoyed the feel of a very large pencil in my hand for the voting - not easy to accidentally walk off with that.

4

When I was checking out the on-line info about advance polls, it mentioned that the big pencils are an accessibility aid for people with handwriting issues.

5

Congratulations.

I’m working the election this year. Anecdotes to follow.

ETA: Voting literally takes 5 minutes in Canada.

6

Forgot my voter card but driver’s license was fine. Advance polls are great.

7

I tried to convince my wife to vote advanced but she wasn’t interested. No matter, we will go early in the day on the 21st. Heard a mini-debate about science policy on Quirks and Quarks today. The Conservative representative was so obviously lying, it was painful.

8

We just got our cards this morning (Saturday post… what? But they weren’t there yesterday, and this morning they were).

9

Sounds rather familiar, except the ID bit.
I haven’t done a pre-poll here but on the day we just provide our name and address.
Voter fraud is not an issue.

All good and comforting to hear.
Makes you wonder why it needs to be made any more difficult than that?

10

Could be that they were put in a neighbour’s mailbox by mistake, and the neighbour dropped them off today. I got my neighbour’s cards earlier this week; I simply went next door and dropped them in the mailbox.

11

Same with me. We got an extra card in our mailbox, intended for the house the next street over with the same number. I just walked it over in the evening and put it in the mailbox.

This happens frequently and I normally just put them back into the post box for proper delivery, but since elections are time-sensitive I took it over right away.

12

But don’t you guys have complex ballots that need cheat sheets to figure out how to mark them? We just make one “X” and we’re done.

The ID thing isn’t at all difficult to comply with heck, you can even bring in a pill bottle with your name on it. Or make a declaration vouched by someone else on the voter list and you’re in.

13

My local (NJ) voting station works by X-marks-the-spot, anyway.

14

How many "X"s do you get to make on your average ballot?

We’re one and done.

15

There is usually two ballots to complete.
With HoR with preference voting you need to rank all candidates so 3-12, typically 5-6.

With the Senate and the infamous table cloths with STV and proportional representation you now need to mark a minimum 5 boxes, previously was just one.

So yes, bit more than “one X and we’re done”.

I guess my point is making access to a polling booth as convenient and the act of voting no more difficult than necessary.

16

No argument here.:stuck_out_tongue:

Our voting rolls are based on our income tax returns. When you file your return, there’s a box to tick if you want the tax people to transmit your name and address to Elections Canada. Do that, and you’re on the voter roll. Easypeasey!

Then, a month before the vote, Elections Canada sends out the cards mentioned in this thread, to confirm you’re on the roll and telling you where the local polling station is for your voting division, as well as advance poll info.

You take that card and one other piece of ID with you and that’s all you need. I used my driver licence, but the list of acceptable ID is very long. Health card also works.

All very smooth.

17

My wife and I voted at the advance poll this afternoon. One person at the other poll but nobody in line at ours. Took a couple of minutes longer as I had to maneuver my wife’s wheelchair up to the voting booth table before she could vote, but quick and easy.

While ID is required, it’s very easy to have acceptable ID. My father is in a nursing home and no longer has any real ID other than his health card, but the regs allow one of the staff to vouch for ID for residents in this and similar cases.

18

It’s never taken me more than ten minutes to vote from arrival to end.

19

I usually wait for election day to vote, my polling station is less than a 3 minute walk from my front door and I like the slightly heightened buzz from having more people around. Still, the entire process has never taken more than 15 minutes. The retired couple living across the street from me usually work at the polling station for the day so if I ever forget my registration card I’m probably going to be okay.

I was encouraged to hear that the advance polls at a couple of universities in southern Ontario reported a 69% increase in turnout from the last election.

20

Just got back from the advance poll. Aside from the fact that the poll clerks were both new and were slow, it took less than 5 minutes. The other poll at the same location had about 30 people waiting.