Polling hours

If I lived anywhere else besides Ontario and Quebec, I’d be quite upset about the polling hours for this federal election.

I read James’ post this morning about the polling hours in Ontario being from 9:30 AM to 9:30 PM. That’s a change from the last election (even the recent provincial election) where the polls closed at 8 PM.

I then read an article on CBC News regarding polling hours across the country. Due to a recent clarification in the rules, it is now allowed to report election results from other parts of the country when the polls in your region are still open. Previously it was thought that you might be less willing to vote if the results had already been announced in other regions of the country. This applied mainly to those in the Western provinces as the polls would be open for a few hours after the ones here closed.

The CBC article says:

Elections Canada staggered the hours so that the majority of results from polls across the country are available within a few of hours of each other.

This makes sense from a logistical standpoint, particularly for the media as there won’t be long periods with no new results being reported.

Here are the polling hours across the country:

• Newfoundland and Atlantic time zones – 8:30 AM to 8:30 PM


• Eastern time zone – 9:30 AM to 9:30 PM


• Central time zone – 8:30 AM to 8:30 PM


• Mountain time zone – 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM


• Pacific time zone – 7 AM to 7 PM

The exception is of course Saskatchewan – those residents living in the Central time zone can vote between 8:30 AM and 8:30 PM while those in the Mountain time zone vote between 7:30 AM and 7:30 PM.

For us in Ontario it’s great because the polls open after most people get to work (except for me this morning) and they’re open for 4.5 hours after the normal work day (if it stops at 5 and 3.5 if it stops at 6). That’s plenty of time to vote and if you factor in the time you’re legally allowed to take off from work to vote, there’s even more opportunity. There should be no excuse for those of us in the Eastern time zone not to vote.

If you’re living in Vancouver though, polls open most likely before you even get out of bed and they’re only open at most a couple of hours after work. That doesn’t seem fair to me. Sure I get the same amount of time as someone in Vancouver, but which interval do you think is more convenient to citizens?

I guess the result of all of this is that we won’t know any good results about the election until after 10 o’clock EDT. It’s going to be interesting to follow how things shape up for our next government.

Please remember to vote though. It’s incredibly important to exercise your rights as a Canadian citizen.

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