No, you can't take a picture of your ballot: Voting rules, explained — and how they get counted

It’s not exactly a papal conclave, but the doors are similarly locked, and the counting of votes at Canadian polling stations and their reporting to Elections Canada and onward to the public on election night is similarly steeped in tradition, protocol and a grand sense of purpose. Many people don’t realize it happens the old fashioned way, each ballot counted by hand, the vote read aloud to an audience of official observers before it is tallied up on paper and only then entered into a secure computer system. All of this happens on election night, and Canadians can expect to have a pretty good sense of the outcome by the time polls close at 7 p.m. Pacific Time in British Columbia. But with early voting, proxy voting, people who vote outside their riding, such as in the military or correctional contexts, and the possibility of recounts, the official results will still be a few days away. There will be nothing as portentous as white smoke from the Sistine Chapel chimney, but National Post has all the details on how this works, and how you’ll learn the outcome. When does voting stop? Polls close according to a staggered schedule so that most results will be available at the same time across the country. This also allows for dramatic races between media organizations to be the first to declare major results like majority or minority, although these are technically predictions based on incomplete information. Elections Canada itself does not call anything but vote totals, and those come in only as they are counted. Watch for that to start happening at around 8:30 p.m. in Atlantic Canada, and 9:30 p.m. in Ontario and Quebec, with the final polls closing at 7 p.m. in British Columbia, which is 10 p.m. in Ottawa. How do I actually mark my vote? You draw a little X beside the name of your chosen candidate on a ballot provided at a polling station, fold it and put into the box. How do they count them? Once voting ends, the doors of the polling station are closed and no one is allowed in or out. An election officer then counts the number of electors who voted. They count all the spoiled ballots and put them in a special envelope. They do the same for unused ballots, along with the stubs of the used ballots. Then, with observers from the various campaigns and at least two Elections Canada workers, each ballot is unfolded in turn, and the chosen candidate’s name is read aloud and shown around. The returning officer then enters the paper tally of those votes into a computer program, which relays it to Elections Canada headquarters. Is that reliable? For one thing, it leaves a paper trail, which some electronic voting systems do not. There are also electronic tabulators that can count handwritten votes, but these are not used in Canadian federal elections. Some provinces use them. What triggers a recount? A difference between winner and second place of less than one thousandth of the votes cast. They can also be judicially ordered if there is, as Elections Canada describes, “credible affidavit evidence” of errors. Can someone erase my pencil vote? This was a theory that got some traction online lately, that you should bring a pen to vote so that no one will, for example, erase your vote for the Rhinoceros Party and replace it with a vote for the Marijuana Party. Or maybe just smudge your vote and spoil it. Elections Canada seems to think this is pretty far-fetched, and in any case, you are free to bring your own pen, or marker, indeed crayon. It is part of Elections Canada’s mandate to offer everyone a little golf pencil, which they can keep. Can I take a photo of my ballot to post on social media? Absolutely not. It is illegal. As Elections Canada says: “ If people were allowed to show how they voted, they could be forced to vote in a certain way or votes could be bought. If you’re enthusiastic about voting and want to share your experience with your friends, take a photo of yourself outside of the polling station.” Can I use my phone to show my proof of identity? Yes, that’s fine. Also, voters who use their phones for help reading may do that, as long as images of ballots are then deleted. Can I take video of other people voting inside the polling station? Come on. No, obviously not. You also shouldn’t believe texts or robocalls telling you that your polling station has moved locations at the last minute, but instead report them to Elections Canada. Canada has a history of dirty tricks like that.

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