WE NEED TO ENGAGE VOTING-AGED YOUTH
Politicians consistently fail to address issues important to young voters, writes Tony Bui.
Last year when I was working as a polling official during the Ontario Election, the highlight of my day was giving a presentation to a class of fifth-grade students and their teacher who came in for a short class trip; this polling station, like many, was located inside their school gym.
In the midst of that presentation, those students posed a number of questions ranging from asking what people were putting inside the ballot box, to asking if that “French party” was in this election, referring to the Quebec-based Bloc Québécois. One student proudly proclaimed “my mom said she’s going to vote for (so-and-so party)!” before being hushed by her teacher. And another asked me quite assertively, “who are YOU going to vote for?” I did not provide an answer.
When I asked how many talked about politics at home, at least half shot their hands up. Already at the age of 10, these students were engaged and interested in the political process, more so than many adults the age of their parents.
Sadly, it appears that same excitement and enthusiasm is not present in today’s voting-aged youth. Or, if it is, it hasn’t translated to the polls.
In 2011 during the federal election, only 38.8 per cent of youth aged 18-24 voted, in contrast to the general voter turnout of 61.1 per cent for that election.
So, the question that many ask is: why? Why are youth not interested in voting?
Apathy is one reason that is widely suggested, but it is far from the only one. Youth cite cynicism about the current state of politics, a lack of policies dedicated to youth issues, and, for many youth, a lack of knowledge and education of politics.
Politicians consistently fail to address issues important to youth, and fail to include youth in their policies. It breeds the cynicism and apathy that youth have today with politics, where they feel that their participation won’t do anything to change the status quo. Youth have a difficult time trusting politicians who ignore them in favour of attracting their regular base of supporters, and it fuels the perception that politicians are all the same.
The Millennial Dialogue Report (MDR) published by the Broadbent Institute pointed out that key priorities for youth included education, poverty, the environment and health care. When looking through the websites of the three major parties, main policies included middle-class families, economic growth, and security, but little dedicated specifically to issues that youth are passionate about. Education for example, a hallmark concern of Canadian youth, has been notably absent from the conversation.
Unfortunately, parties don’t place much effort into tailoring their platforms to youth or dedicate time addressing core youth issues, believing that the youth vote is too volatile a demographic to target in their campaigns.
It’s a Catch-22; the lack of youth participation is the cause of the lack of policies directed at youth, which itself is the reason why youth don’t participate. And as a result, youth don’t feel that voting for their next member of Parliament will address the issues they care about.
This lack of participation in voting by youth has dire consequences for the health and legitimacy of our democracy.
So what are the solutions? It’s clear there is no quick fix to getting young people to the polls, and we must accept that any solution must be long-term; there’s no way we’re going to substantially boost youth participation in time for this upcoming federal election.
However, that doesn’t mean we can’t begin addressing the issue today. Urging parties and federal leaders to finally consider integrating the concerns of youth into their platforms is one way to start breaking down the barriers that prevent them from being engaged. Making voter registration and the process of voting easier is another, and so is promoting youth-led initiatives that tackle the issue of voter apathy like the University of Ottawa’s iVote-jeVote.
And education remains a top way of introducing young people to the process of voting. Those students who came to my polling station last year were very lucky to have a teacher that was dedicated to teaching them about civic engagement; even though it is a part of the Grade 5 curriculum in Ontario, not all teachers teach it because of how daunting it can be.
We therefore need a better, more concrete strategy that engages youth in all grades to politics, and allows educators to access tools that make teaching the subject less intimidating. We cannot allow civic engagement to become an afterthought in education.
We not only need to start thinking of strategies to engage today’s voting-aged youth, but we need to make sure that the enthusiasm I witnessed in those fifth-grade students remains when they become the voting-aged youth of tomorrow.
Their passion at such a young age was refreshing, and is desperately needed to change the worrying trends of youth voter turnout.
Otherwise, our democracy will soon become greatly threatened, not by terrorism or economic woes or by an unaccountable Senate, but by a lack of youth who bother to even care.
When I asked how many talked about politics at home, at least half shot their hands up.