The Federal Faux-Pas
Country-wide, there is an epidemic of young people who just aren’t voting.
In a 2013 study, Marc Maryand, Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, found a direct link between students being uninformed about politics and the sobering statistics concerning young voters. In his report, Maryand noted that only 38.8 per cent of Canadians aged 18-24 cast their ballot in the 2011 federal election.
“[Young people] were generally less interested in politics, less likely to view voting as a civic duty, and more likely to feel that all political parties were the same and that no party spoke to issues relevant to youth,” the report stated.
Bilan Arte, National Chairperson of the Canadian Federation of Students and youth voter, said she disagrees.
“We’ve heard before the rhetoric that we’re apathetic, that people don’t care and don’t want to engage in the election process,” she said. “It stems from the fact that the system makes it very difficult for us to vote.”
The system Arte is talking about is the Fair Elections Act, also known as Bill C-23. This law was put in place by Conservative representative Pierre Poilievre in 2014, and it made voting processes more strict.
“Young people don’t often have a fixed address and often don’t have the identification to be able to prove they can vote in their riding during school,” Arte explained.
Elinor McNamee-Annett, lead campus organizer at the Council for Canadians, said she shares the same concern.
“The Fair Elections Act has changed what identification people can use at polling stations and for the most part, this is going to negatively impact students who are not living in their home ridings,” she said.
Before the introduction of Bill C-23, voter information cards and vouching for roommates were accepted, but through the government’s campaign to crack down on voter fraud, these practices were deemed too risky and were discontinued, according to the Elections Canada website. For many students, that leaves few options besides going to the polls with mom and dad on Oct. 19.
A Broken System
In attempts to reverse the trend of low voter turnouts among youth, Elections Canada is launching a national initiative aimed at university students.
Stéphane Hamade, vice-president (education) the University of Waterloo’s student federation, is spearheading this campaign at his school.
“This pilot in particular is going to help students to vote more conveniently than they would have otherwise,” he said. “Students are going to be able to vote in their ridings at home and in the local region and could use their driver’s licence to prove their address where they would need a lease otherwise.”
This pilot program is going to include 40 universities across Canada for the 2015 Federal Election.
Pilot Problems
Ali Charge, Eastern Ontario Rep of the Young NDP, said he doesn’t think Elections Canada is doing enough to help students get to the polls on Election Day. Instead, he said candidates from all parties have a duty to educate young voters.
“It falls upon the candidates who are running in the riding,” he said. “It’s up to Canada to inform students and give them the information they need to vote.”
McNamee-Annett said she doesn’t believe that parties alone can offer a solution to the limited pilot.
“Young people aren’t represented in politics and are not being thought of as an important priority,” she said.
She said she wants to see an overhaul of our electoral system where people do not feel they have to vote strategically in order to avoid wasting their ballot.
“Our current system doesn’t allow people to have a lot of options and makes them have to vote strategically instead of voting for who they want to vote for,” she explained. “A lot of people want to vote for those smaller parties but feel they can only really vote between the three big ones if they want their vote to count.”
The issue of electoral reform is why McNamee-Annett said she got on board with their ‘Storm the Dorm’ campaign. As the lead campus organizer, McNamee-Annett and her team will be visiting campuses across the country, educating them about the political parties running in their respective ridings and how to vote. The goal is to show students they have many parties to choose from and that their vote matters, regardless of who they choose.
“We’re a very diverse group . . . thinking we’re going to vote either Conservative, NDP, or Liberal is a shame,” McNamee-Annett said.
Smart Solutions
Aside from organizations and political parties, average Canadians are also taking a stance on the issue of low voter turnouts amongst young people.
Thierry Tardiff and Matthew Heumann are involved in the British Columbia-based Votenote app sponsored by Concordia University. The app allows users to access information on all parties in their riding and provides prompts about polling stations based on their address. Tardiff, director of media relations at Votenote, said he thinks the app offers convenience, something that young voters are looking for.
“You could be on your couch on a Sunday afternoon and open the app instead of booting up your computer, waiting for it to load, look up the website, and so on,” Tardiff said. “We’re on our phone 24 hours a day for everything . . . and we think it’s time that politics has its place.”
Heumann, the lead developer of the app, said he thinks our current electoral system is inaccessible to today’s youth.
“If this app becomes a tool and young people start using it, this is perhaps the most accessible way a politician can reach out to a young person,” Heumann said.
He said he believes that Votenote will encourage politicians to include issues that appeal to young people and get them involved in politics again.
Yukon filmmakers Nina Reed and Heidi Loos have taken a different approach, creating a video aimed to get young people excited about politics.
“[The video] has developed the more we’ve gotten into it . . . it kind of propelled us to make it better, you know, try and reach more people,” Reed said. “It became more than a hobby and became an opportunity for us to be able to educate ourselves.”
Their video captures Yukon youth’s thoughts on the upcoming election without relying on traditional methods. Heidi Loos said she believes debates on politics have to be more accessible for young voters.
“In the ways politics is presented a lot of the time, you know it has these boring topics for older people,” Loos said. “It’s not about things that actually affect them . . . it is just these politicians talking.”
When asked why youth do not vote, Reed said she thinks it comes down to asking the right questions.
“They feel like it doesn’t really apply to them,” Reed said. “If you do care about something, then you should go out and vote.”
