Every time for federal/state level elections, both primary and general. I’m sure I’ve missed some local-only elections as I rarely think “March 15th! Time to vote on county commissioner!”
My wife and I are so-called “supervoters”. We vote in every election. The one coming up is especially important; as we saw in the Bush years, it’s not the guy in the white house, it’s all the dreck he hauls in with him.
I’ve never missed voting in a federal or provincial election. The one provincial one I missed I was out of the country and at that time you couldn’t vote absentee.
I think I’ve voted in most municipal elections, since finishing university. (As a perpetual student, I moved around a bit and wasn’t sure if I could vote at times.
As for voter turn-out generally, the Canadian federal elections tend to be in the mid-60% of all registered voters.
The election turn-out for the federal election last year was higher than usual, especially amongst young millennials, who supported Justin Trudeau. The turn-out was 68.5%, the highest since the 1993 election.
As well, since the federal government maintains an ongoing voters list, the number of registered voters is pretty close to the total number of eligible voters. That means that the number of registered voters who voted is actually close to the number of eligible voters (Canadian citizens over 18).
I think that’s different from the US, isn’t it, since in the US there is quite a large gap between the number of registered voters and the total number of eligible voters? That difference has to be taken into account in making comparisons about voter turn-out.
Same for me, and I’m an American!
While living in the US, I voted in every election I could. Since moving to Canada, I have voted absentee (but only for federal offices) every two years. Since becoming a Canadian citizen, I have voted in every election except school board. The reason for the latter is that I know nothing about the candidates. When my kids were in school I was active in the local school board (despite being a non-citizen) and knew the commissioners personally and had opinions on them. Now I no longer have any reason to do so.
I mailed in my ballot for this election in early October.
I pretty much always vote based on the opening posts’ discounting of eg. spring school board elections (though I usually vote in those too) or non-presidential primaries (I often don’t vote in those). Also I didn’t vote regularly till I was in my late 20’s, but that’s quite awhile ago now. I don’t find any candidate for president now who combines being acceptable to me with any chance of winning and I’ll probably leave that blank, rather than figure out the computerized version of write in. And Democrats are a total lock on down ballot races in my Congressional district and county. However school board elections are now in November here and I have an opinion there among electable candidates, and also want to vote ‘no’ on a couple of ballot initiatives (‘yes’ on ballot initiatives in my state almost always preempts the legislature’s rightful role as I see it, so I almost always vote ‘no’).
Polling place is a three minute walk, which does contribute to my habit.