Thanks, Sunspace, that was very informative. So there’s a federal list? 
That would save us a lot of time; unfortunately, our federal gummint doesn’t administer elections, states do, which accounts for the crazy quilt of laws and methods.
I don’t quite know what an “advance poll” is, though.
Following up on Sunspace’s post:
our federal elections are uniform across the country. The provinces don’t have any role to play in them.
the elections are administered by a non-partisan federal body, Elections Canada, which is staffed by career civil servants, not political appointees. The Chief Electoral Officer for Canada is responsible directly to Parliament as a whole. (I gathered from the post-mortems on the Florida debacle that the head of the electoral process there was an elected Republican who co-chaired Bush’s Florida campaign - that strikes me as totally bizare and unfair.)
people who aren’t able to vote on voting day because of travel, work, etc., can vote at the advance poll, which was held on two or separate three days about 10 days ago. Their votes are sealed and won’t be counted until tonight. The turn-out at the advance polls was apparently about 60% above average - whether that is because the June 28 date interfered with vacation plans, or an indication of general high voter turn-out is not yet known. Traditionally, high voter turn-out is not a good thing for the incumbent government.
Well, the advanced poll is quite different. Sunspace earned that priviledge by the only way possible up here. He hunted and killed a grizzly with his bare hands. The rest of us during the regular election times must first win our ballot from the ballot protector. You have two choices, either defeat them in unarmed combat, or answer a series of riddles, each more devious than the preceding one. The advanced pollers also have the luxury of pencils. This is pretty much the same as the American system I believe.
An advance poll is simply a chance to vote before the main election day.
It’s for people who know that they’re going to be on holidays or out of the country or whatever on election day. There are a limited number of polling places open, the procedure is the same, and presumably they seal and keep the box of ballots until the counting after the main election.
Keep in mind that, unless otherwise arranged (I think there are mail-in votes), you have to physically vote at One Specific Place in our system, the polling place where your home is. I suspect that this is because they print the voter’s list out and divide it up geographically, handing the appropriate segment to each poll.
This results in people crisscrossing the city on election day, trying to get from work to their polling places. Putting the polling place near home causes the least disruption to travel patterns. By law, we are guaranteed three hours off work to go and vote, as well.
If you know you are going to be too far from your polling place to get there and vote on The Day, you can vote in the advance poll. They then make a note on the main list that you’ve already voted, and can’t vote again.
Balduran, I am the spawn of generations of prairie socialists, enviros, Greens, and NDPers. Grizzlies are an endangered species. I may have hunted that grizzly with my bare hands, but when I had it ashore, I took the hook out and threw it back for the next guy. 
Sunspace (and Balduran :D) laid it out pretty well. I should point out there’s no special qualification for an advance poll; any voter can vote there if s/he chooses.
One can also vote by special ballot, which is mailed in and can be done any time after the candidates’ list is established up to about a week before the election. A special ballot can be ordered online or from Elections Canada, or obtained at any returning office.
re: “voter turnout” has wallowed around 40 something percent in Canada for quite some time which in my opinion, is reflective of a healthy society. We’re getting a ‘good’ (subjective definition) turnout this time around because people are tired of the Liberal spend-o-rama so they will vote for the Conservative spend-o-rama.
They have even considered making a law forcing people to vote to “save democracy”. I roar with laughter when our feckless leaders come out with that one, apparently unaware of the contradiction in terms, or more likely just not caring because they think everyone is too stupid to notice.
All those “grey heads” shuffling around the polling booths are going to make things very unpleasant in the next decade or so for the young people in our country - we have never in the course of human history had to accomodate so many geezers living to a ripe old age as now, just wait till the boomers start to retire. I can’t get my head around the ramifications of that one - whew! what a mess. That, plus the fact that 1 in 4 Canadians is employed in some capacity by the government. Good grief!
I favour non-cooperation, like the way we destroyed the ridiculous Liberal gun registry. No revolution needed.
“sans haine, sans violence et sans arme”
Hi sven, welcome to the boards. You have a cite for that of course.
Well, I voted.
In terms of voting procedure, I found it interesting that I was not asked for any ID other than the voting postcard. It certainly wouldn’t be hard to steal these cards; for example, I know of several apartment blocks where the stack of everyone’s cards was just left on top of the mailboxes.
Frankly I’ve found this whole campaign & election depressing. I actually considered not voting, which is new. There’s little doubt about the outcome of my riding (setting myself up to look like an idiot tonight ;)), and this $1.75/vote thing still seems very weird to me. If I wanted to give one of these idiots $1.75, I’d mail him a check.
He won’t be able to find one. This site from Elections Canada has a chart from 1984 to 2000. Turnout dropped from 75% to 61% in that period. The lowest province was Newfoundland in 1988 at 55.1%. (52.2% in Northwest Territories, and 54.1% in Nunavut in 2000.)
re: “source”
Hi! Yes, I read it somewhere.
I know the heads of the five crime families (Libs, NDP, PC, Greenies and potheads) get real excited when voter turnout passes 50 percent lending a sense of legitimacy to their assorted protection rackets and shakedown operations, but I could be wrong.
So we’ll chalk it up as one of those “pulling it out of the air” type of facts then shall we?
Yes, it was a ballpark, stated as such, but you can “chalk it up” to whatever you like. I am surprised that it’s closer to 50 something percent, I didn’t think it was that high nationally. Who is doing all that voting?
Oh right, I forgot. The 1 in 4 likely get 100 percent participation dividing up the spoils.
I thought for sure that is the statistic I would get called on.
My bad, this is the Straight Dope, gotta get all the facts exact.
76.8% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
They charged you $1.75 to vote?
AAAAHAHAHA, oh that’s precious!
Now all they have to do is make the “service” mandatory by law! (illegal to NOT vote)
Full marks for creative pocket picking.
That closes my case for me better than I could, thanks.
Yes, that’s correct.
No, they did not. The parties receive $1,75 for each vote they receive. Voters do not have to pay in order to cast their ballot.
Yeah, I could’ve phrased that better I guess. Although I suppose in one sense we are charged for it, just not directly at the polls.
How long till the polls close out your way matt? (I always screw up these time conversions…)