NEW CANADIAN VOTER DIVES INTO MUNICIPAL ELECTION
Real plans for engagement needed more than platitudes, says Young Voters of P.E.I.
Sarah Cheverie, at 18, may be bucking the trend.
Reached at noon before her class at UPEI, the first-year prevet studies student says she plans to cast her first ever vote in Monday’s municipal election.
Her biggest issues of concern are common amongst millennials – the cost of tuition, the dwindling supply of rental housing and the rising cost of living.
Cheverie said she remains an undecided voter. She plans to pick the mayoral candidate her parents decide on, but, she says, candidates need to do a better job of reaching out to millennial voters.
“I think that a lot of people our age don’t really vote because they don’t really know who to vote for. There’s not enough talk about it in the media that we’re used to,” Cheverie said, referring to social media.
Youth voter engagement is a theme that has been repeated several times throughout the municipal campaign in Charlottetown. Mayoral candidates have spoken about the need to involve more young people in city committees, and to retain youth in the city.
Based on the most recent data, individuals between the age of 15-39 represent close to 30 per cent of P.E.I.’s population. But conventional wisdom in politics is that this block of voters simply can’t be counted on to turn out for elections.
But Jesse Hitchcock and Nathan Hood, both members of Young Voters of P.E.I., say that the 2015 federal election has upended this assumption.
Nationally, youth voter turnout jumped by 20 per cent in that election. Hitchcock believes that may have given Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party the edge they needed to defeat Stephen Harper.
And yet both Hood and Hitchcock see little sign of this ‘youthquake’ of civic participation in Charlottetown. Neither expect to see a jump in millennial voter turnout on Monday.
“I think it’s going to rise. I think it’s still going to be low,” Hitchcock said.
And Hood doesn’t anticipate much excitement in the young voters.
”I think if it rises, it’s not going to be enthusiastic,” Hood said.
The two agreed that Charlottetown’s mayoral candidates have not outlined a vision that will draw in young voters. Worse, they believe that no candidate has outlined a clear, detailed strategy to tackle the lack of affordable rental housing in the city.
“This is the most I’ve ever felt people’s disenfranchisement,” Hitchcock said.
Hood said the rental housing issue has hit home for millennial voters. He pointed to the lack of specificity that has been offered up by candidates on the issue of regulation of short-term rental properties advertised on sites like Airbnb. He believes that rental housing is being removed from the market because of short-term rental properties.
“There’s an immediacy on the part of young people to have these issues addressed,” Hood said.
“These are people where, next month, or in two months, (they) might have to move out. And is this a city where I’m actually going to be able to find a place to live?”
Hitchcock said candidates have only offered token proposals about engaging millennials in municipal government. She believes most municipal committees should mandate having a youth member.
Despite the challenges, Hitchcock said she has drawn hope from the campaigns of younger council candidates, such as Ward 10 candidate Ryan Cooke and Ward 4 candidate Valentine Gomez.
Cooke and Gomez both have backgrounds in engineering and have focused on issues of housing, transit and sustainable urban planning.
Back at UPEI, Cheverie has some concrete advice for future political candidates hoping to reach out to youth.
“They should maybe get involved in more social media that we use, like Instagram. Not a lot of us use Facebook,” she said. “That’s why I think Justin Trudeau has such a big following with young people because he’s on Instagram and he posts almost once a week about different things.”
The Young Voters of P.E.I. will be organizing a watch party in Charlottetown on Monday night, starting at 6:30 p.m. above the Charlottetown Fire Department on Kent Street.