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When you receive your ballot from an Elections Ontario representative at your polling station, tell them you are forfeiting your right to vote. They’ll mark it as “declined,” and it will be counted along with the other ballots.

Reject or spoil

Another option is you can take your ballot into the voting booth and reject or spoil your ballot. You can do this by writing outside of the candidate’s name or not marking it at all and submitting it.

Declining vs. not voting

If you decline your ballot, you are participating in the process and your actions will be noted. If you simply don’t vote, your actions will only be noted as part of the turnout number.

Declining is a right

Section 53 of the Ontario Election Act reads: “An elector who has received a ballot and returns it to the deputy returning officer declining to vote, forfeits the right to vote and the deputy returning officer shall immediately write the word ‘declined’ upon the back of the ballot and preserve it to be returned to the returning officer and shall cause an entry to be made in the poll record that the elector declined to vote.”

You can check out the vote counts for past Ontario elections, including local byelections on the .