Canada is a constitutional monarchy and has a parliamentary system of government. The Queen of England is our head of state and the head of our government is the Prime Minister.
We do not vote directly for our Prime Minister. The entire country is divided intoridings (an electoral district). There are 308 ridings in Canada. Each riding elects aMember of Parliament (MP) to represent their riding in the House of Commons. The political party with the most MPs will form the government, and the leader of that party will become Prime Minister.
On the day of the election, I take my voter identification card (sent to me in the mail) and one piece of government-issued identification (driver's license, passport, etc.) to the polling station. I vote for my MP by filling in a ballot similar to the one in the picture above. At the end of the day, all the ballots are counted. We have afirst-past-the-post system. This means that whoever gets the most votes wins the election.
In the evening, the election results are reported on TV. Canada has 5 time zones, so it takes a long time for all the polls to close and for all the ballots to be counted!
We do not vote directly for our Prime Minister. The entire country is divided intoridings (an electoral district). There are 308 ridings in Canada. Each riding elects aMember of Parliament (MP) to represent their riding in the House of Commons. The political party with the most MPs will form the government, and the leader of that party will become Prime Minister.
On the day of the election, I take my voter identification card (sent to me in the mail) and one piece of government-issued identification (driver's license, passport, etc.) to the polling station. I vote for my MP by filling in a ballot similar to the one in the picture above. At the end of the day, all the ballots are counted. We have afirst-past-the-post system. This means that whoever gets the most votes wins the election.
In the evening, the election results are reported on TV. Canada has 5 time zones, so it takes a long time for all the polls to close and for all the ballots to be counted!
