LET’S MAKE EVERY VOTE HAVE VALUE

As the B.C. election campaign heads down to the wire, party leaders are urging supporters to get out to vote. Indeed, one of the overriding messages over the course of that last few weeks has been the importance of voting. Elections B.C. has even used star power to convince people to cast a ballot — one of its ads ending with a stern-looking Trevor Linden saying: “I vote. Do you?”

According to statistics compiled by Elections B.C. and B.C. Stats, voter participation has dropped from 77 per cent in the 1980s to 57 per cent in the last provincial election in 2013.

Reasons given for the decline include voter apathy, frustration with the first-past-the-post system, lack of political education and a failure of political leaders to inspire voters to support them — to name a few.

A low turnout is deemed to be a problem because the election result would be seen as unrepresentative of the population being governed. Some have argued that we should make voting mandatory, as is the case in Australia, Belgium, Mexico and the Democratic Republic of Congo. However, this turns a hard-fought constitutional right into an obligation, like jury duty or paying income taxes. A right surely implies the right not to exercise it.

Besides, it’s not the number of voters that skews representation, but rather their composition. As Postmedia News political columnist Rob Shaw reported this week, only 40 per cent of eligible voters aged 25 to 34 cast ballots in 2013 compared with 74 per cent of voters aged 65 to 74.

A low turnout is deemed to be a problem because the election result would be seen as unrepresentative of the population being governed.

In the 2015 federal election, the youth vote spiked by as much as 20 per cent, largely attributable to the appeal of Justin Trudeau. But, with all due respect to hardworking leaders Christy Clark, John Horgan and Andrew Weaver, no leader in B.C. has Trudeau’s drawing power.

The parties have tried to court university students, of course — the Liberals with a promise to lower the interest rate on student loans, and the NDP to eliminate interest on them altogether, while the Greens have pledged grants for post-secondary students.

But the key to raising the participation rate of youth might involve tweaking the way we vote. Some form of proportional representation could persuade young voters that no vote is wasted. Making voting more convenient, which Elections B.C. has done with more advance polls, mail-in ballots and other initiatives, may encourage busy millennials to cast ballots. Also, more outreach would ensure that students and newcomers to Canada are knowledgeable about B.C.’s political system and aware of their eligibility to vote. Banning attack ads wouldn’t hurt either. In short, whatever the outcome of the election, we hope for a government that best represents the wishes of voters and acts honestly on their behalf.