I don’t like the candidates — can I cast a protest vote? Answering your voting questions

This story came from audience members, like you, who got in touch with us. Send your election questions to [email protected].

A record-breaking 7.3 million Canadians cast their ballots for the federal election in advance polls over the long weekend, according to an estimate by Elections Canada.

The non-partisan agency said based on its preliminary figures, that marks a 25 per cent increase from the 5.8 million electors who voted in advance during the 2021 federal election.

Françoise Enguehard, a regional media adviser in the Atlantic region for Elections Canada, told CBC News it’s too early to say whether the record-high turnout will lead to higher voter turnout for the election overall, but said it’s a sign that Canadians are “engaged.”

That engagement has led to many questions about voting in the Ask CBC News inbox. We’ve already answered some of the most frequently asked queries, but we’re still getting more questions.

As election day on April 28 creeps ever closer, here are answers to more of your most pressing voting questions.

Elections Canada will not proactively contact you to confirm when your ballot was received, but there are ways to check yourself. 

If you applied online to vote from within your electoral district, you can check the status of your ballot through the online voter registration service. You will have to use the reference number you were given when you submitted your request.

Otherwise, you can check the status of your application or returned ballot by calling Elections Canada at 1-800-463-6868 (toll-free in Canada and the U.S.). People who are deaf or hard of hearing can call 1-800-361-8935 (toll-free in Canada and the U.S.).

Elections Canada says it can only confirm a mail-in ballot’s status once it has arrived and been processed. It’s important to note that the ballot may be in the mail system for several days.

Mail-in ballots cast by electors from inside their riding must make it to their local Elections Canada office by the time polls close on election day to count. Those cast by electors from outside their riding must make it to Election Canada’s Ottawa headquarters by 6 p.m. local time on election day to count.

Elections Canada says it has no plans to introduce online voting. 

“Online voting is just not secure enough: If an election were hacked, our democracy would be under threat. It’s too risky,” Elections Canada says on its website. 

Even if it wanted to introduce online voting, Elections Canada says it’s up to Parliament to modify the Canada Elections Act to change the way people vote in Canadian elections.

No, you only get one vote. If you live in two locations, Elections Canada says you should register using whichever address you consider your home. 

There are measures in place to ensure electors don’t vote twice. For example, if an application for a special ballot is accepted and you receive a voting kit — which you’ll need to vote by mail — your name is struck from the voter list that’s kept at the polls.

If you do show up on election day and find your name struck out, you’ll have to explain what happened to the voting kit you were sent. If you didn’t receive your kit or misplaced it, you’ll have to swear an oath that you have not already cast a special ballot. 

You will then be allowed to vote. But you’ll be counted as having voted in-person and having received a voting kit. Elections Canada will then verify against their records of mail-in ballots to make sure you have cast only one vote.

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If you are found guilty of intentionally requesting a second ballot, you can be fined up to $50,000 or jailed for up to five years.

Although some provinces allow voters to register a protest vote by declining a ballot for a provincial election, there’s no official way to do that in a federal election.

“There is no procedure in the Canada Elections Act to protest or decline a ballot or vote ‘none of the above.’ If a ballot is cast without choosing a candidate, it is considered rejected,” Elections Canada told CBC News in an email. 

If an elector puts a mark beside more than one candidate’s name it will also be recorded as a rejected ballot. Basically, any time an elector casts a ballot that cannot be counted for a candidate in their riding, it will be considered rejected.

If a voter immediately returns the unmarked ballot to the polling station attendant and never casts it, it won’t be recorded as a protest vote either. In that case, it will be marked as a spoiled ballot.

Spoiled ballots — a ballot that does not get put in a ballot box — also include ones handed back to a poll station worker after a mistake was made.

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The rejected and spoiled ballots are still tracked as part of the counting process, but Elections Canada says the reason they were rejected or spoiled does not get reported.

That hasn’t stopped some people from publicly protesting on election day. In 2000, Marika Warner blended her federal election ballot into a smoothie and drank it in protest at an Edmonton polling station. 

But what Warner did was considered an offence under the Elections Act. She and a few other members of the Edible Ballots Society were charged with destroying their ballots, although she told CBC in 2019 that the charges were eventually dropped.