Put some thought into casting ballot
Re: “Take voting stations to the young people,” letter, Feb. 6.
The writer suggests that, since most eligible voters under 30 can’t be bothered to attend a polling station on voting day, we must bring the polling stations to them, where they “shop, work or go to school.”
Perhaps turnout in elections would be vastly increased if ballot boxes were inserted between the candy bars and the tabloids at grocery-store checkouts. People could determine the future of the province and nation with no forethought whatsoever and with the most infinitesimal of inconveniences.
How would that improve our democracy? Do we really want everybody’s whims stuffed in the ballot box like so many greasy candy wrappers for the sake of high turnout? I say no.
Voting ought to be safe, accessible and reasonably convenient. Thankfully, in British Columbia it is, especially compared with many other parts of the world where people often put their very lives on the line to cast a ballot. People who cannot be bothered to vote in a place such as B.C. are people whose governmental preferences are probably best left uncounted, to the benefit of all.
Younger citizens love to declare the unassailable truth and urgency of their political opinions, especially on social media, but time after time on election day, it is their quieter elders who go to the polling station and make sure their opinions count, literally. Jared S.C. Faber Victoria