This blog is going to focus on something that Canadian youth have reported time and time again to be boring and uninteresting. And can I really disagree? Watching a bunch of old guys sitting in a chair talking to some other old guy sitting in a bigger chair is hardly entertaining! But that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about…I’m here to talk about putting a simple X on a paper, I’m here to talk about taking half an hour out of your day to set the political ship’s course for the next term in office.
Canada’s political arena has largely been shaped by its older generations due to the disinterest of Canada’s youth. In 2001, there was 10.6 million youth who are at voting age and, although that puts us at a minority level as compared to the 22.5 million other Canadians, when it comes to voting, 10.6 million votes can make a large difference!
Such is not the case. According to the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, In Canada’s 2000 election, only 25% of us, the youth, voted in the Federal election and those who did not vote remain uninvolved in the political system today and will remain in the periphery of politics when they grow older.
In the same study, the IIDEA found that youth voting is down around the world. In 2000, 36% of voting aged youth participated in the US presidential election, low numbers due possibly to Dubya Bush being a candidate. While the same year, the UK attributed their lack of voter turn out to the absence of their youth population.
In 2003 Elections Canada published: Explaining the Turnout Decline in Canadian Federal Elections: A New Survey of Non-voters. What they found is that, among the 18-29 age group 58.4% were “just not interested”, 46.4% didn’t like any of the eligible parties or candidates and 33.8% thought their vote wouldn’t matter! I wonder if they would maintain that same attitude if they knew there is 10.6 million other young people who could vote and actually make a change in politics?
But enough with stats.
I vote in all the elections. I can’t really tell you why I do, I guess it’s because I can. In all the elections that I’ve participated in, not once has the candidate I voted for made it to office but that doesn’t discourage me. I know I at least counted myself in and I have the right to complain about it! By not voting you lose that right to complain because you didn’t have your voice heard. And believe me, when it comes to votes, politicians will listen! They may not HEAR you, but they will LISTEN!
Understandably, bills, legislation, cabinet ministers, convoluted campaign speeches and debates and even the Prime Minister are aversive stimuli. Throw in prorogation, redundant coalitions and immigrant party leaders, and Canada has successfully lost the attention of youth coast to coast to coast.
In the past election, I decided to ask each party how, as a mid-twenties, Aboriginal post secondary student living off reserve, their party would best represent me. Not one of them answered me directly or at all. The conservatives and liberals neglected to call me back, and the NDP replied with a “if you refer to our website, we believe that will answer all your questions.”
Now, you might be asking yourself, “how is all this negative stuff supposed to persuade me to vote in the next election?” I can tell you right now, that voting is our free choice. We don’t have to wait for conflict to dictate to us whether we vote or not. We don’t live in China or any other communist regime where our voice does not matter. We don’t have to worry about whether or not we die on our way to vote.
Take Iraq for example: On March 7th 2010, the Iraqi people were finally allowed to vote. Insurgents, looking to disrupt the democratic process, killed 38 people who were on their way to cast their vote. 80 more were wounded in attacks that begun even before polls opened. 38 people gave their life for their one vote. At the end of the day, fear gave way to defiance and many people walked away from polling stations with purple fingers, a sign that they had cast their vote. Among them, a young girl dipped her finger in the purple ink despite not being old enough to vote. She was proud that her people finally had a voice.
Nelson Mandela was the first South African President to be elected in a fully representative democratic election. Before that he helped lead the African National Congress as a political entity that defied the strong hold that apartheid had on South Africa’s politics.
The ANC used non-violent means in their anti-apartheid stand but after an event called the Sharpeville Massacre, the ANC joined the conflict with a violent stand against the Afrikaans, the party responsible for implementing apartheid. Members of the ANC were found guilty to charges equal to treason. Mandela spent 18 years imprisoned on Robben Island and just under 15 years fighting for democracy prior to that. More than 30 years of Mandela's life were spent fighting for the one moment of time it took for him to cast his vote.
People literally crawled out of hospital beds and left their squatter shacks and camped overnight in voter line-ups so they can take part in South Africa’s first election in decades. And like Iraq’s recent election, insurgents aiming to sabotage the South African election killed 21 people and wounded150 more in the 2 days leading up to Election Day. Even more people giving their life for something that we find uninteresting…
On November 4th 2008, The United States made history with the election of their first Black President: Barack Obama. In the election that would see Obama as the 44th president, a record high of 18-29 year olds came out to participate: 42.5% of males and 50.3% of females voted in the election. The total population of 18-29 year olds in the US is 29.6 million. Average the percentage of males and females who voted and we get 13.7 million voters, that’s more than the total population of the same age group in Canada. Yes, American youth are doing better than us when it comes to voting. If that’s not reason enough to go and vote, I don’t know what is!
Nelson Mandela once said: “your playing small does not serve the world”, voting to us is a small act so in this context I disagree with him. One vote does matter.
So what about Canadian politics? What can we do to make it more interesting?
Firstly, we need our politicians to listen to us. We need to call our MP’s and ask them what they can do for us, and I’m not speaking about one or two of us. I’m talking about flooding their office and phone lines with Canadian youth. If we show them that we are interested in politics, perhaps our interests will show up on their election platforms, perhaps they will have the time to tell us why we should vote for them.
If we all show up on their radar then they will have no other choice but to listen. I recommend not waiting until election time like I did, they tend to be busy looking for votes during elections and have no time to do what they are supposed to be doing.
Secondly, we need to pass on the word on how valuable voting is to other youth. Old people telling youth to vote is as ineffective as ineffective as George W. Bush was at his job. Youth telling youth, however, speaks volumes to Canada’s young population and is more effective due to positive peer pressure.
In closing, I just want to reiterate that we don’t have to give our life to cast our vote and we don’t have to sit in a prison cell to make our point that we have the right to vote. In Canada, voting is every person’s right to do much like free speech or following the religion of our choice. I need you, those who do not vote, to ask yourself: “would hurt me to vote?” and to those of you who do vote: you are doing a very simple act and are doing your country a very good thing so keep it up!
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