Elections Canada will not be offering the Vote on Campus program in September 2021. The reasons Elections Canada cited for not hosting Vote on Campus in 2021 were that the pandemic and working under a minority government made it too difficult to plan events on post-secondary campuses around the country.
Minority Parliaments
According to Elections Canada, an election can be called at any time when there is a minority parliament. Given, that it takes the feds months to set up with these programs on post-secondary locations Elections Canada opted to not set up any Vote on Campus sites for the 2021 election.
What is Vote on Campus?
Vote on Campus was launched in 2015 with only a handful of locations. But, in 2019, Vote on Campus was expanded to 109 post-secondary institutions around the country during the 2019 election. Essentially, Vote on Campus is a program that gives students the opportunity to vote in their home ridings by special ballot or update their voter information so that they could vote in their new location where they attended a post-secondary institution.
Students Can Vote at Elections Canada Offices
Going back to how students could vote before the Vote on Campus initiative, students can still vote by special ballot at any Elections Canada office. The deadline for students to do vote at an Elections Canada office for the 2021 election is September 14.
Elaine Allan, BA, MBA
Technology & Business Blogger
Vancouver, BC, Canada