Election Day '08!

The day has arrived! It's Election Day 2008, and while Canadians are hitting up the polls today, I can sit back having cast my vote by mail last week sometime. I'd never done it before, but it's pretty neat - you send them your application form, and they send you a ballot, and an "inner envelope" which you stick the ballot in. That envelope goes in to an "outer envelope" which is marked for your riding with a bar code for scanning. That envelope in turn goes into a third envelope which you put in the mail. I sent mine off a little later than I probably should have, so I guess I'll never know if it arrives in time. But at least I did it.

Unfortunately, due to the timezone changes, I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to log on and find out who is running the country - although I'm pretty sure I know how it's going to go. I've been following campaign news as much as possible (read: as much as I can take), and I've enjoyed pulling up ElectionPrediction.org, a great little site that attempts to guess the outcome based on input from people who live in the ridings. Last election they were 90% right, and they're predicting a Conservative minority yet again (with some gains by the NDP) so I guess we'll have to see how it all plays out later on.

Frankly, this has probably been one of the least memorable elections I've ever experienced, and not just because I'm way over here. I don't care for any of the leaders (and apparently neither does anybody else), and even as a politics junkie I had very little interest in any of the campaigns. The best thing so far has probably been the Green party being included in the debate for the first time and not blowing it.

Still, tomorrow it will be all done. Whatever will we look forward to then?

Happy Election Day, everybody!