Sources
- Macpherson, Don. (August 22, 1995), "Vote-hunting Bid to lure outside voters not a formula for stability", The Gazette, (Montreal).
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The Committee to Register Voters Outside Quebec was created to help citizens who had left Quebec in the two years before the 1995 referendum to register on the electoral list.
Quebec lawyer Casper Bloom, chairman of the committee, and Liberal MNA Lawrence Bergman worked together to "make all eligible voters outside Quebec aware of their rights, to have them register and finally vote" said the pamphlet.
Since 1989, a clause of the Quebec electoral law allows for ex-residents of Quebec to signal, in writing, their intention of returning to Quebec and vote by mail. The committee, which operated during the referendum campaign, handed-out pamphlets including the form to be added to the list of voters by the Directeur général des élections du Québec.
The pamphlet gave out a toll-free number as contact information which was the same number as the one used by the Canadian Unity Council.
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National referendums are seldom used in Canada. The first two referendums in 1898 and 1942 saw voters in Quebec and the remainder of Canada take dramatically-opposing stands, and the third in 1992 saw most of the voters take a stand dramatically opposed to that of the politicians in power.
In political science, an initiative is a means by which a petition signed by a certain number of registered voters can force a government to choose either to enact a law or hold a public vote in the legislature in what is called indirect initiative, or under direct initiative, where the proposition is put to a plebiscite or referendum, in what is called a Popular initiated Referendum or citizen-initiated referendum.
Mixed-member proportional representation is a mixed electoral system in which votes cast are considered in local elections and also to determine overall party vote tallies, which are used to allocate additional members to produce or deepen overall proportional representation.
The Charlottetown Accord was a package of proposed amendments to the Constitution of Canada, proposed by the Canadian federal and provincial governments in 1992. It was submitted to a public referendum on October 26 and was defeated.
The 1995 Quebec referendum was the second referendum to ask voters in the predominantly French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec whether Quebec should proclaim sovereignty and become an independent country, with the condition precedent of offering a political and economic agreement to Canada.
The 1980 Quebec independence referendum was the first referendum in Quebec on the place of Quebec within Canada and whether Quebec should pursue a path toward sovereignty. The referendum was called by Quebec's Parti Québécois (PQ) government, which advocated secession from Canada.
The Equality Party was a political party in Quebec, Canada, that promoted the use of English in Quebec on an equal basis with French. Four Equality Party members were elected to Quebec's National Assembly in 1989, as part of an anglophone reaction to changes made by the governing Liberals to Quebec's language law. The party had no success in subsequent elections, and stopped organizing after the 2003 Quebec election.
Canada holds elections for legislatures or governments in several jurisdictions: for the federal (national) government, provincial and territorial governments, and municipal governments. Elections are also held for self-governing First Nations and for many other public and private organizations including corporations and trade unions. Municipal elections can also be held for both upper-tier and lower-tier governments.
Elections in Venezuela are held at a national level for the President of Venezuela as head of state and head of government, and for a unicameral legislature. The President of Venezuela is elected for a six-year term by direct election plurality voting, and is eligible for re-election. The National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional) has 165 members (diputados), elected for five-year terms using a mixed member majoritarian system. Elections also take place at state level and local level.
Regular elections in Croatia are mandated by the Constitution and legislation enacted by Parliament. The presidency, Parliament, county prefects and assemblies, city and town mayors, and city and municipal councils are all elective offices. Since 1990, seven presidential elections have been held. During the same period, ten parliamentary elections were also held. In addition, there were nine nationwide local elections. Croatia has also held three elections to elect members of the European Parliament following its accession to the EU on 1 July 2013.
A referendum was held in the Canadian province of British Columbia on May 17, 2005, to determine whether or not to adopt the recommendation of the Citizens' Assembly on Electoral Reform to replace the existing first-past-the-post electoral system (FPTP) with a single transferable vote system (BC-STV). It was held in conjunction with the BC Legislative Assembly election of 2005. Voters were given two ballots at that time: a ballot to vote for a Member of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia (MLA) in their constituency and a referendum ballot. The referendum received considerable support from the electorate but failed in meeting the 60-percent threshold that had been set. A second referendum was held in 2009.
All elections in the Czech Republic are based on the principle of universal suffrage. Any adult citizen who is at least 18 years old can vote, except those who have been stripped of their legal capacities by a court, usually on the basis of mental illness. Elected representatives are elected directly by the citizens without any intermediaries. Election laws are not part of the constitution, but – unlike regular laws – they cannot be changed without the consensus of both houses of the Parliament. The Czech Republic uses a two-round plurality voting system for the presidential and Senate elections and an open party-list proportional representation system for all other elections. The proportional representation system uses the D'Hondt method for allocating seats.
Elections in Hungary are held at two levels: general elections to elect the members of the National Assembly and local elections to elect local authorities. European Parliament elections are also held every 5 years.
Elections in Lithuania are held to select members of the parliament, the president, members of the municipal councils and mayors, as well as delegates to the European Parliament. Lithuanian citizens can also vote in mandatory or consultative referendums.
An electoral roll is a compilation that lists persons who are entitled to vote for particular elections in a particular jurisdiction. The list is usually broken down by electoral districts, and is primarily prepared to assist election officials at polling places. Most jurisdictions maintain permanent electoral rolls, which are updated continuously or periodically, while some jurisdictions compile new electoral rolls before each election. Electoral rolls are the result of a process of voter registration. In most jurisdictions, voter registration is a prerequisite for voting at an election. Some jurisdictions do not require voter registration, and do not use electoral rolls, such as the state of North Dakota in the United States. In those jurisdictions a voter must provide identification and proof of entitlement to vote before being permitted to vote.
Fair Vote Canada (FVC) is a grassroots, nonprofit, multi-partisan citizens' movement for electoral reform in Canada. Headquartered in Kitchener, Ontario, it promotes the introduction of an element of proportional representation for elections at all levels of government and throughout civil society, instead of the first-past-the-post electoral system currently used at all levels of government in Canada.
Option Canada was a Montreal-based lobby group established some eight weeks before the voting day of the 1995 Quebec referendum on sovereignty. According to registration papers filed with both the Canadian and Quebec governments, the private group was incorporated by executives of the Canadian Unity Council on September 7, 1995. The group was disbanded soon after the referendum was over.
The partition of Quebec refers to the secession of regions of the province of Quebec, rather than to partitions in a strict political sense. It is usually discussed as a possibility in the event of Quebec secession from Canada. It was not a key issue in either the 1980 Referendum on Quebec Sovereignty or the 1995 Referendum on Quebec Sovereignty, but dominated the politics of national unity for about two years in the aftermath of the second referendum. Since then, the issue has occasionally resurfaced.
The Unity Rally was a rally held on October 27, 1995, in downtown Montreal, where an estimated 100,000 Canadians from in and outside Quebec came to celebrate a united Canada, and plead with Quebecers to vote "No" in the Quebec independence referendum . Held at the Place du Canada, it was Canada's biggest political rally until the 2012 Quebec student protests. The rally attracted considerable controversy because corporate sponsors, particularly from outside Quebec, made what, in the view of the Director General of Elections in Quebec, were illegal contributions to the No campaign. In the end, it was determined that these provisions of Quebec's electoral laws did not apply to sponsors located outside Quebec.
The National Register of Electors is a continuously updated permanent database of eligible electors for federal elections in Canada maintained by Elections Canada. It was established in December 1996 when Bill C-63 was granted royal assent and the preliminary National Register of Electors was populated with data in April 1997 during the final Canada-wide enumeration. It replaced a system which required door-to-door enumeration of eligible electors for each electoral event. The database contains basic information about electors: name, address, sex, and date of birth. An elector may register or update their personal information between elections, or may request to be excluded from it per the Canada Elections Act.