It's election day. Here's what you need to know to vote

The candidates have made their pitches and now it's time for the voters to have their say.

It's election day in Ontario and polls have opened. Here's what you need to know before heading to the booth.

Who can vote

• To vote you need to be 18 years of age, a Canadian citizen and a resident of Ontario.

When you can vote

• Polls opened at 9 a.m. and close at 9 p.m.

Where you can vote

• If you don't know where your polling station is you can find it on your voting card, or go to the Elections Ontario website and enter your postal code.

What to bring

• If you received a voting card in the mail you will need to bring it and a piece of identification bearing your name to your polling station.
• If you did not receive a voting card you can still register at the polling station. You need to bring identification bearing your name and current residential address, such as a driver's licence or utility bill.
• Elections Ontario has a full list of acceptable identification.

How to vote

• Only ballots marked with an X are counted toward a candidate's tally.
• If you make a mistake you can ask for another ballot from the election official.
• To decline a ballot in Ontario, a voter must receive it and return it to the deputy returning officer and say that he or she is declining the ballot. The returning officer writes the word "declined" on the back of the ballot, and it is set aside and counted separately. Declined ballots are not lumped in with spoiled or rejected ballots.

You can find a complete list of eastern Ontario candidates below. After that, we have some information about CBC's coverage tonight.

Riding profiles

• Bay of Quinte
• Carleton
• Glengarry–Prescott–Russell
• Hastings–Lennox and Addington
• Kanata–Carleton
• Kingston and the Islands
• Lanark–Frontenac–Kingston
• Leeds–Grenville–Thousand Islands and Rideau Lakes
• Nepean
• Orléans
• Ottawa Centre
• Ottawa South
• Ottawa–Vanier
• Ottawa West–Nepean
• Renfrew–Nipissing–Pembroke
• Stormont–Dundas–South Glengarry

How to follow results

CBCNews.ca will have up-to-the-minute election results and CBC Ottawa will have coverage of how eastern Ontario's races played out.

CBC's television special Ontario Votes 2025 is set to run from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET.

You can also stream the election night special on our results page, CBCNews.ca, CBC Gem or YouTube. There will also be a streaming version of the show with ASL, which you can find here.

CBC Radio's Jill Dempsey and Queen's Park reporter Shawn Jeffords will host a live provincewide radio special beginning at 9 p.m. ET. It's also available at CBC Radio One or the CBC Listen app.

Advance voting results

During this campaign's advance voting period, Elections Ontario says nearly 680,000 voters cast their ballots, representing about six per cent of the eligible voters in Ontario. 

The last provincial election in 2022 saw over one million advance ballots, but over a 10 day period. 

The final turnout of that election was among the lowest in Ontario's history with only about 43 per cent of eligible voters casting a ballot.