With 10 days to go before the Oct. 19 federal election, advance polls are opening Friday and will run through the Thanksgiving long weekend. And political parties are working hard to secure support as Canadians start casting ballots.

Beginning Oct. 9 and running until Oct. 12, polls are open from noon to 8 p.m. at advance polling stations.

The beginning of advance voting coincides with the release of the Conservative and the NDP platforms on Friday.

In the last federal election, the use of advance polls was higher than for each of the three previous elections, according to Elections Canada. The agency reports that 2,111,542 electors cast their ballot early, representing 14 per cent of all electors who voted.

"Pop-up" polls make it easier for students to vote

This year, an Elections Canada pilot project aimed at making it easier for students to vote saw dozens of "pop-up" polls set up on university and college campuses.

Between Oct. 5 and Oct. 8, students were able to vote by special ballot, which will be counted in the riding where their home address is located.

"For a lot of young people, the introduction of the Fair Elections Act has made it incredibly difficult for them, because there have been a lot of restrictions made around the kind of ID you can use," Bilan Arte, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students, told CTV News Channel.

Arte said the campus Elections Canada offices made it much easier for students to vote when their home riding is not where they’re attending school.

An estimated 42,000 students across Canada took advantage of the pilot project and Elections Canada is studying the possibility rolling out a wider program across the country for the next federal election.

Nearly three million Canadians under the age of 24 are eligible to vote in the Oct. 19 election. But only 39 per cent of those eligible in the 18- to 24-year-old age group voted in the 2011 federal election, according to Statistics Canada.

Inmates can vote Friday

More than 22,000 eligible inmates will be able to vote at federal prisons across the country on Friday. The 2011 election saw a 54-per-cent turnout rate in prisons, which wasn't too far behind the 61.1-per-cent turnout seen throughout the rest of Canada.