Voting on campus just got a lot easier.
The University of Victoria campus is hosting an Elections Canada special elections office in the Student Union Building upper lounge from Oct. 5 to 8.
As long as they’re registered, students can actually vote for their home riding, be it Nanaimo or in Alberta, said Kenya Rogers, director of external relations for the University of Victoria Student Society.
“It’s been awesome, students are really excited. The main thing we hear is that students want to vote in their home riding,” she said.
The special elections office on campus is a pilot project, one of 40 across the country.
Last week the UVSS launched their This Year We’re Voting federal election awareness campaign in front of the McPherson Library with representatives from all four major parties, including some candidates.
It preceded the Sept. 23 Science Debate moderated by Bob McDonald (host of CBC’s Quirks & Quarks) with Victoria candidates Jo-Ann Roberts of the Green Party and Murray Rankin of the NDP, and Saanich-Gulf Islands candidate Tim Kane of the Liberal Party.
“Students are starting to feel voting is not that hard to understand,” Rogers said. “We’re trying to change the narrative around youth votership, and the idea that students traditionally don’t vote.”
Online, UVSS is pushing the hashtag #uvicvotes through social media.
The UVSS is hosting an all-candidates debate at 11:30 a.m. in the SUB Vertigo Room on Oct. 7. Attending are all of the Green Party, Liberal Party and NDP candidates from the South Island ridings of Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke, Cowichan-Malahat-Langford, Saanich-Gulf Islands and Victoria.