It’s not just a right, it’s a responsibility: It’s time to vote!
A total of 47,915 people voted in the BC Southern Interior riding in 2008, for a 64-per-cent turnout. While that was better than the nationwide turnout of roughly 59 per cent, it was still down significantly from the regular 75-to-80-per-cent marks we saw in the 1960s and 1970s.
Our democracy has a head cold, for sure, but the youth vote is truly sick — and by “sick” we don’t mean awesome. In 2008, less than 38 per cent of eligible voters aged 18 to 24 bothered to cast ballots.
The problem is not simply that youth don’t care. A Dominion Institute study before the last election found that 78 per cent of young people think their vote matters.
So what’s the problem?
Apparently many young people feel uninformed, say organizations like Apathy is Boring. They say the solution is a simple matter of candidates actively addressing youth issues and soliciting their vote.
We’re not sure that has happened in this campaign, as most candidates have tended to focus on the older demographics, as usual. This is simple strategy, for the most part, as there is no point in appealing to people who don’t vote. And despite the emergence of youth “vote mobs” across the country, it’s still not clear if young people will actually mobilize in any significant numbers on May 2.
But we get the feeling that might actually happen this time around. Turnout at advance polls is up about 35 per cent across Canada and there is a general buzz in the nation about politics for the first time in a long time.
This buzz seems to extend to the youth, and least judging from what we see on the Internet. And if young Canadians match their rhetoric on YouTube with action at the polls, you can bet politicians will be paying a lot more attention to youth issues on May 3.
— Rossland News