Federal election 2025: What you need to know as a voter

The 45th federal election will be held on April 28. Here’s what you need to know as you prepare to cast your ballot.

On a recent episode of The Big Story podcast, Parliament Hill reporter Cormac Mac Sweeney also spoke to Dianne Benson with Elections Canada to get the answers you need before you vote. Listen below.

For everything you need to know about the voting process, consult the Elections Canada website.

Voter ID card

If you’re registered to vote, you should have received a voter information card in the mail by April 11. Bring this card with you, along with accepted ID, when you head to the ballot box.

The card tells you where and when to vote, the accessibility of your assigned polling station on election day and advance polling days, how to request voting assistance in advance, and the address of the closest Elections Canada office where you can vote by special ballot.

The voter ID could be one of the pieces of ID used to confirm who you are. But if you don’t get that in the mail or you lost it, you can still go out and vote.

Who can vote?

You need to be a Canadian citizen and 18 years of age on Election Day.

“So even if your birthday was in the week before and you went to an advanced poll, you’d be okay. You just need to be 18 years old on Election Day,” Benson said.

You also need to be registered to vote.

“What that means is you need to have the ID that proves who you are and where you live,” she said.

If you are not registered to vote, you can do so until April 22, or when you go to vote.

Ways to vote

Election day

April 28, polls will be open for 12 hours and the hours vary based on different time zones.

Advance polls

They are open April 18-21, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET. For your location, check your voter information card or use Elections Canada’s Voter Information Service.

Voting early at any Elections Canada office

There are around 500 Elections Canada offices open across the country. You can vote at any one of them by April 22 at 6 p.m. You will vote using the special ballot process.

Their offices are open seven days a week:

• Monday to Friday: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET
• Saturday: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET
• Sunday: noon to 4 p.m. ET

Voting by mail

You apply online or at any Elections Canada office across the country by April 22 at 6 p.m. Once you apply to vote by mail, you can’t change your mind and vote at advance polls or on election day.

You will vote using the special ballot process.

“You can vote by special ballot like this if you, maybe you’re travelling, maybe you have to be away because of your job or you know some other circumstance and you don’t want to go and vote in-person, you can vote by going to the returning office or applying online and get a ballot mailed to you,” Benson said.

“And in both those instances, you’re voting by special ballot, filling in the name of the candidate, and then you mail that back to us.”

What ID do people need to bring with them when they vote?

Option 1 is to show one of these pieces of ID: driver’s licence, or any other card issued by a Canadian government (federal, provincial/territorial or local) with your photo, name and current address.

Option 2 is to show two pieces of ID, and both must have your name and at least one must have your current address. For example, voter information card and a utility bill. Click here for a list of accepted ID.

Option 3 if you don’t have ID, Elections Canada states on its website that “you can still vote if you declare your identity and address in writing and have someone who knows you and who is assigned to your polling station vouch for you.”

“The voucher must be able to prove their identity and address. A person can vouch for only one person (except in long-term care facilities).”

What is vouching?

This is one option voters have for proving who they are and where they live.

“There are some people, for example, unhoused electors who don’t have anything that has their address on it because they are currently without a residence,” Benson said.

“And it can also happen for students, for example, because you’re going to have a group of students who live in the house, and one of them looks after the bills, pays the utility bill. They have a piece with their name and address, but the rest of the students in the house don’t. So for people who don’t have that, you can get a letter of confirmation.”

She said Elections Canada works with soup kitchens, for example, or with schools where students are staying, to have the administrators provide a letter giving confirmation of address to someone.

“So you could go and have that, but if you had absolutely no identification and nothing, you could go with someone who lives in the same riding, the same polling division as you, who has ID, they can go to the polls with you, and they could vouch for you.”

Given advancing polling falls over the Easter long weekend, can these dates be changed?

“The days that the advanced polls are held are written in law and there’s very little leeway around when they can be changed,” Benson said.

“What we try to do is offer all these different options that if you were not able to go on those four days of the weekend, you have the special ballot, you could go into the returning office anytime. You still have the option of going on election day.”

Provisions for people with disabilities

Elections Canada’s website states all electors are assigned a polling station for advance polling days and on election day.

All polling stations will have either an automatic door opener or an election worker at the door who can help.

To make sure your assigned polling station meets your accessibility needs, check your voter information card, enter your postal code into the Voter Information Service, or call Elections Canada at 1-800-463-6868 or 1-800-361-8935 (TTY).

Call Elections Canada if your polling station doesn’t meet your accessibility needs, or if you need language or sign language interpretation when you go to vote.

If you need help to mark your ballot, you can bring a support person with them when you go to vote. However, the support person needs to make a written declaration before you vote.

“Our election workers can also assist you if you need help marking your ballot. In this case, we always have a second election worker present to act as a witness,” the website states.

Click here for more services and tools to help you vote.

What are rules around employers giving time to vote?

An employer must give you three hours off for voting.

“But if you, let’s say you start at eight in the morning and you’re done at four in the afternoon … you have a three-hour window there after work. Same thing if you’re a shift worker, you might be working a 12-hour shift if you worked 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.”

“If there are times where you’re not going to get that three-hour window of the time when the polls are open, then your employer is required to allow you time to go and do that.”

What happens in cases of a spoiled ballot?

You can ask for a new ballot if there is a tear at the corner of your ballot or some printer ink on it. Benson said this is rare but it can happen.

If you made a mistake on the ballot, Benson said the deputy returning officer can allow one replacement ballot to give you and they track the spoiled ballot.

“We count those because we count every ballot that’s printed and at the end of the night we have to know how many were in the box how many were rejected or spoiled so we keep a really close eye on those,” she said.

“But if you made just an honest mistake or you tore the ballot by accident when you were doing something with it behind the voting screen, you do get a kind of a one-time, we can give you another one.”

Aside for marking an X as indicated on your ballot, you are not permitted to write anything on it.

“The reason these measures are put in place is to ensure there’s no bribery or intimidation, for example, because if someone said ‘we want you to vote for this candidate and we’ll know because when the votes are counted we will see something on the ballot that indicates you did.'”

“So there’s a real amount of security and integrity around the ballot so that you’re voting in secret. It’s only you that knows what your vote is and that secret vote goes in the ballot box and who you voted for is not tied back to you.”

No candidate or anybody can bribe you or coerce you into casting a ballot — that is against the law.

Can you take a photo of your ballot and share it on social media?

You cannot take a photo of your ballot and share it on social media.

“Then the vote is no longer secret and that would open you to the possibility of intimidation or bribery because you are showing proof of who you voted for. The secrecy of the vote is important for all of us and keeping those votes secret is important for a democratic process,” Benson said.

“You’re more than welcome to come outside of the voting booth or be outside of an Elections Canada office to take a selfie and say, ‘I voted.’ … The difference is you are not allowed to take a picture of who you voted for on the ballot.”

What happens if Elections Canada is able to link that social media post to that ballot, does that then become a spoiled ballot and doesn’t count?

“There is an independent commissioner who will investigate possible contraventions of the law. So it could be that that gets referred to that office,” Benson said.

Refusing a ballot

Can Canadians show up to a polling station and officially refuse a ballot?

“We don’t really have that kind of a system here in Canada. I know there may be some areas where that is counted separately, but it wouldn’t be counted like that. It wouldn’t go in the ballot box. It would be the same as a ballot that got torn or a ballot that didn’t work out, it never gets in the box,” Benson said.

How many registered parties are there in Canada?

For this election, there are 16 registered parties.

“Now that doesn’t mean you’re going to see all those parties on the ballot when you go to your particular voting station. … Some of these parties may have a candidate in a few ridings across Canada, where they have a particular level of support or have a candidate that they want to put forward,” Benson said.

“For most of us, we’re going to see a somewhat smaller number of parties on our ballot in our riding.”