Excellent reply. I confess to finding the US system mind boggling. The whole concept of "voter registration" and its being controversial and source of discrimin

Excellent reply. I confess to finding the US system mind boggling. The whole concept of "voter registration" and its being controversial and source of discrimination just boggles my mind - as does how ridings are determined. We have pretty much a single voter's list: We have a federal organization responsible for maintaining the federal list, and it shares information with its provincial counterparts, and vice versa, and they each cross-check their information for integrity purposes. When you file your income tax, which is done exclusively federally, except for in Quebec, you can check a box to share your name and address info with Elections Canada for purposes of maintaining the federal list. The provincial agencies use all available provincial and municipal sources of information to cross-check their lists with data obtained from the federal agency. Door-to-door enrollment is pretty much never done, except when there are major changes in an area that have yet to be reflected in the various sources of information. That same independent federal agency sets federal riding boundaries based on population; it was created about 50 years ago to prevent jerrymandering and works pretty darned well: The government does not get any say in setting riding boundaries (we have a pretty transparent auditing system, which helps). In fact, in Southern Ontario, the provincial ridings are aligned with the federal boundaries, so the independent federal agency is scrutinized by the government of the most populous province, as well as by the federal auditing arm. Several weeks before an election, each registered voter gets a card in the mail with their polling place and, in the case of municipal elections, at least in Ontario, their ballot colour (we have four independent school systems, don't ask, sigh, and the ballot ensures you get the correct school board candidates). You arrive at a poll with your card (optional, really, if you know what you are doing, they have all the same info) and a piece of photo ID and you are checked against the published list. If you aren't on it, you can register at the time, but I don't know the details, never had to do it. This morning as my name was being crossed off the list by the volunteer at my table, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the names of my wife (out of the city today, voted early) and my daughter (in school downtown all day, voted early) were crossed off in the actual printout provided to the polling place, not crossed off by hand. Oh, and in Ontario, at least, we pretty much use the same ballot and tabulation system for all elections. No hanging chad, no arms to pull, no electronic screens. A piece of paper, a marker, and a "privacy screen": you mark your ballot, slide it into the screen, take it to the returning officer who inserts the open end from which the ballot protrudes into a scanner, which pulls in the ballot, scans it, tabulates it, and slides the ballot into a locked box, available for hand recounting afterwards. Nice and simple and effective and completely non-controversial. The Bush-Gore election honest-to-god boggled our minds.