I love voting in Canada!

Tonight I walked home from my polling station with a smirky grin.

You see, today is election day for the government of Ontario. After work (and going to the library, and buying some tortilla shells at the local grocers … hmmm dinner … phew, that’s better! Okay, now where was I?), I went to a local church with my voting card to cast my vote (having decided for sure how I would vote just an hour or so previously).

Let me tell you, elections in Ontario are well-oiled machines! Examples:

• Your voting card tells you which polling station to go to (do churches get paid for hosting polling stations, or is that just part of the deal that comes with tax-free status???);
• People (whom I assume to be volunteers) seem to have very clearly-defined roles and procedures, like the greeter who makes sure you’re at the right polling station (whoops … but the right church was just across the street), and the person who checks your ID and gives you your ballot;
• Your ballot is a stiff piece of paper, obviously well-planned, folded in a particular fashion, the outside of each one initialized by an auditor (I guess so you can’t put a counterfeit ballot in the ballot box???);
• The cardboard shields behind which you fill out your ballot;
• The markers that tell you how far away from the voting booth you should stand while someone else is casting his/her ballot;
• You vote using a short yellow pencil (perhaps needing some sharpening, but oh well), marking an X next to the name of your selection, rather than using some mysterious electronic voting machine with no paper trail and gaping security vulnerabilities that are produced by a company that is run by people who are clearly partisan to one political party;
• Etc., etc. – and I can’t even begin to imagine what they do to prepare for the election and how they manage the ballot boxes afterward!

I am always incredibly impressed by the organization and foresight that goes into our elections here in Canada. So I probably would have walked home tonight from the polling station with a bit of civic pride, but that is not what put that goofy smile on my face. No, instead it was this realization: HOT GUYS ALSO VOTE! Or at least congregate outside polling stations.

Yes, as I was leaving the church/polling station, there were some very good-looking men hanging out on the sidewalk. One in particular looked like he could have been in a Gillette commercial (you know, the ones where rugged yet impossibly handsome men show off how deliciously clean-shaven they are? Are the men in Gillette commercials still rugged, or are they prettier now? Now that I think about it, the Gillette commercials are one of the few things that I miss now that I watch so little TV. But if the men are pretty these days, it’s just as well that I’m spared that disappointment.).

Anyway, I was totally unprepared to meet such handsome men, so I just walked on past. D’oh!!!!!!

So I got to thinking … maybe I could volunteer with Elections Canada? Would this be a good way to meet the hot guys in my neighbourhood whom I hadn’t even known existed??? Yes, that might mean dealing with other quirkier members of the public, like my mom who holds her nose as she votes (What? She says she does!), and it could mean long hours with no assurance that I will actually be given a babe-greeting job.

And then I developed a plan: first, pray for a minority government that quickly collapses, requiring another election. Then, doll up on election day, and be prepared to linger or walk around the block a couple of times so I can pretend I’m just voting or coming from voting. But, la pièce de resistance, have a button prepared that I can wear that will read, “Kiss me – I just voted!”

And that, my friends, is the thought that made me smirk as I walked home from the polling station. :)