Voting in Cambodia

Yesterday I voted. At least I think I did.

I have missed other elections when travelling and never thought too much of it. There were even times when I was living in Val-des-Monts when I seriously considered giving the whole thing a miss, when the 60 km round-trip to the poll just didn’t seem worth the effort. But this time I did make the effort.

I’m not sure what it was that lit the fire in my belly for this election. Maybe it was e-mails from friends in my riding lamenting the need to “vote strategically” in order to block the Bloc. How they wish they could just vote for the party that they believed should win. Maybe this reignited my anger that a party who is motivated to secede is even allowed a place in the House of Commons. More likely it is because I am haunted by a beautiful e-mail that I received from a Nepali friend who is 26 years old and was participating in a democratic process for the first time this spring. Included in his e-mail were the words “That was my first vote in my life. So nice.”

So this time I downloaded the form from the Elections Canada website, filled it in and had my driver’s license photocopied. I found a shop on a small Thai island that would send an international fax and sent it off. My friend Warren in Cambodia was kind enough to let me use his work address to receive my ballot as private homes don’t have addresses or receive post here. It was a write-in ballot so I logged back onto the Elections Canada website to find the appropriate candidate, sealed my ballot in three separate envelopes and found my way to the DHL depot. By yesterday there wasn’t enough time left to get my ballot to Ottawa by mail, so I couriered it for an astronomical fee. As I’m typing this it has made its way to Hong Kong via Bangkok. It has five business days to make it to Ottawa in time to be counted – fingers crossed.

Yes, it was a lot of time, bother and money but I don’t regret it for a moment. And I didn’t vote strategically.