To do so, you can go to any Elections Canada office and request a special ballot until 9 p.m. For most Canadians there is only one such piece of ID: their driver’s license.
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With more people than ever deciding to vote early, there were complaints about long wait times at a few polling stations.
Any person with the necessary identification who is in line by the time polls close has the right to vote.
The advance polls are now closed, but there is still a chance to vote ahead of Election Day on Monday.
Dorothy Sitek with Elections Canada told Global News encouragement to vote in a particular way for a specific candidate or party is permitted by the Canada Elections Act. “I think that people are being patient enough to wait means they really want to vote”.
The process took about five minutes per voter, she said, whereas at a Cordova Bay Elementary School polling station on Saturday, there was “an individual who made things happen” and the voting time was greatly decreased.
According to Elections Canada, this represents a 300,000 advance voter increase over the same three-day advance voting period during the spring 2011 federal election, which recorded over 2.1 million voters during the Easter Weekend holiday.
Other Elections Canada staff turned away people who tried using, say, a passport.
That person must be registered to vote in the same polling station and show their own proof of identity and address. “Don’t listen to what they say – look at what they do”, he said. Adriane Carr said Monday.
While most Canadians were carving up the Thanksgiving turkey over the weekend, many were also carving up the federal election campaign, bouncing ideas off friends and family to form a political opinion before heading to the polls on October 19.
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In the Alberta provincial election in May, advance turnout was 31 per cent higher than in the province’s 2012 vote, but the overall turnout was about the same.
