I arrived at the advanced voting location about ten minutes before the polls were set to open. There was already an impressive lineup, and it just got longer and longer and longer. It took forty minutes for me to get out of there.

One man said to me “What a wait for a real waste of time. It hardly seems worthwhile. ” I curtly replied “Sir, there are millions of women around the world who wish they could do this. I’ll stay here all day if I have to.” He actually looked ashamed and quickly turned away.

The Elections Canada staff aren’t well experienced and are only trained for specific scenarios. This gang had absolutely no idea how special ballot voting works and were not comfortable (or authorized to?) making their own decisions. The easiest thing was for me to register as a new voter and vote for a Lethbridge riding. Having no attachment to any one riding and being fairly sure that I’ll be switching to Alberta residency I was okay with that. I had no ID with a Lethbridge address, of course, but was told I’d be treated as someone who just moved here who hadn’t gotten everything changed over yet, which is actually much more fact than fiction.

Once that was all squared away I was able to cast my ballot for the local NDP candidate.

I can’t wait for the results on Monday; for the first time in history there is a chance that the NDP will sweep through Quebec. It almost makes me wish I was still voting in Pontiac. Almost. 🙂