Canadians flocked to the advance polls over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Over the first two days of advance voting in Canada, 25 per cent more Canadians went out to vote when compared to 2015.
Elections Canada only has data for Friday and Saturday of the advance voting, and St. Albert-specific data wasn't available, but the results show around 2 million people voted in the first two days, as compared to the around 1.6 million who voted in 2015.
Leanne Nyirfa, a spokesperson for Elections Canada, said the organization made accommodations to encourage more voters to get out.
“For this election, we extended the hours of the advance polls,” Nyirfa said.
During the last election, advance polls were only open from noon to 8 p.m., while this year the hours were extended from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Nyirfa said she didn’t hear about too many long lines when going to vote either, other than perhaps a bit of waiting over the lunch hour on Friday.
“There was also more polling locations across the country, probably about 25 per cent more locations,” Nyirfa said.
Even when people got to the advance polls, the process went a bit more quickly. Previous elections had voters go through various steps before being handed their ballot.
“This time, as long as you were registered, they just put you right through to a polling station to vote, so it did go a little bit quicker to vote this time,” Nyirfa said.
Elections Canada also had more locations available at university campuses across the country to encourage students to vote.
“We had seven campus locations in Alberta – three in Calgary, three in Edmonton and also at the University of Lethbridge. And we had over that five-day period 111,000 people voted at those polls,” Nyirfa said.
“The last time we did this in 2015, the number was 70,000. So we did have a lot more people voting at the campus polls as well,” Nyirfa said, noting the campus polls were not just limited to student voters and everyone was welcome.
Total numbers for all four days of advance voting will be available on Wednesday.
Voters who missed the advance polls can vote on election day on Oct. 21.
