Voting more than once in municipal elections is possible…and legal
Posted October 16, 2025 7:57 am.
Unusual fact: some property owners will be allowed to vote more than once in the municipal elections to be held on Nov. 2.
How? First of all, Canadian citizens aged 18 and over have the right to vote in the municipality where they reside.
However, it is also possible to vote in another municipality if you own, for example, an apartment building, land, or a cottage.
“We are currently experiencing some 1,100 separate municipal general elections taking place simultaneously. Each of these 1,100 general elections aims to establish a separate municipal council, which will govern the same municipality,” explains Élections Québec spokesperson Julie St-Arnaud-Drolet, explaining this situation.
And there is no limit. A citizen who owns a business in Quebec City, an apartment building in Montreal, and a cottage in Saguenay will be able to vote once in each of these municipalities.
However, it is not possible to vote more than once in the same municipality, regardless of the number of properties a citizen owns there.
“During provincial general elections, voters elect the members of a single legislature, in the same way that a general election within a municipality elects the members of a single municipal council,” adds Julie St-Arnaud-Drolet via email.
While it is possible to vote in more than one municipal election, it is not possible for a citizen to be a candidate in more than one municipality simultaneously.
Quebec’s situation is not unique. Canadian provinces such as Ontario, Manitoba, and British Columbia, in particular, allow their citizens, if they own property, to vote in more than one municipal election.
Right to Vote and Property Rights
When Canada was founded in 1867, the right to vote at all three political levels—federal, provincial, and municipal—was associated with the right to property.
“We’re a long way from universal suffrage. To be an elector, you have to be a man, you can’t have a criminal record, and it’s really the idea that property ownership gives you legitimacy. You’re a true citizen, you’re someone who has the right to speak politically, if you own a property,” explained Harold Bérubé, professor of history at the Université de Sherbrooke, in an interview with The Canadian Press.
The requirement to own property to have the right to vote would disappear at the federal level in 1920 and at the provincial level in 1936. However, this condition would remain in place for a longer period at the municipal level.
“At the municipal level, it’s something that’s deeply rooted in the way things are done. (…) It was a political system that remained closely linked to property ownership, and this explains the idea that for a very long time, only property owners should be allowed to vote because they had something that connected them to the city,” adds the historian.
For Bérubé, there is no doubt that the fact that one could vote in several municipalities when one was a property owner is linked to this historical element.
According to the researcher, the establishment of the municipal system in the mid-19th century by the British colonial authorities was carried out with significant “distrust.”
“The British colonial authorities were traumatized by the fact that the American Revolution was largely prepared for in what were called “town hall meetings,” meetings at the local level, particularly in Boston,” he states.
“So, in the DNA of the municipal system is this idea that it is a very limited democracy. That it is a management tool and not a space for deliberation,” adds the professor.
And this is what makes us “tolerate things at the municipal level that we would never tolerate at the provincial or federal level,” according to Bérubé.
–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews
