Tuesday, May 25, 2004
Why Young People don't vote
Most Young People who don't vote don't do so because they don't believe their votes matter, or because they perceive themselves as being too busy to pay attention, or because they're just plain ignorant and apathetic. However, those are the same reasons that most non-Young People who don't vote don't, so they do little to cast light on low voter turnout among Young People. This entry shall focus not on what I perceive to be the factors suppressing the absolute rate of votership among Young People, but rather on those suppressing the rate of votership among Young People relative to the rate of votership among non-Young People.
1. Few changes in government.
Most people my age (22) cannot recall any Prime Minister before Jean Chrétien. As far as we're concerned, the Liberals might as well have been in power since Confederation (as far as most of them are concerned too, actually). In Alberta, even I, more politically conscious at an earlier age than most of my peers, can barely recall Don Getty, and the Conservatives had been in power for a decade before my birth. The concept of a change in government is as foreign to us as to a young Zimbabwean. This must be a factor, but it can't be everything - after all, there have been longer periods of one party dominance in Canadian history (1897-1911, 1935-1957, 1963-1979), and there are plenty of provinces that have undergone changes in government over the last couple of years. Moreover, Zimbabwe's voter turnout is pretty high. No, there must be other factors.
2. The Age of Polling
Polling is more sophisticated than ever before. This means that the results of elections are known - within a single digit number of seats per party - before the polls open. In our minds, the process has become inverted: rather than the results being determined by how people vote on election day, people vote on election day to fulfill the prophecy of the poll. Is it any wonder that voting has less meaning to those of use too young to remember the uncertainty of the 1988 election?
3. A Declining Sense of Duty
Our grandparents' generation - the educated portions of it, anyway - voted as a matter of duty. They conveyed these values to our parents' generation. However, part of our parents' generation rebelled, resulting in some of the authority figures in our generation - parents, teachers, creepy guys outside of bus stations - not conveying to us the importance of voting. This effect would, logically, be amplified through the ages.
4. Young Politicians
Now, I don't know what your sentiments are on Young People who belong to political parties, Dear Readership, but to my recollection they were all doctrinary gazelle scrotums (scrota? Man, if this were a truly credible blog, I'd look that up). When electoral politics throughout our young lives are personified for us as nasal-voiced boys in ironed slacks with an evangelist's passion (for whatever set of beliefs they've purchased for ten dollars a year) and a propensity for wank-suckery, is it any wonder voting isn't "cool" or "hip"?
Let's be clear - despite the comments in the Journal by my Close Personal Acquaintance Melanee Thomas, it's not accurate to say that "Young people want to be engaged, but it has to be something where they can see the results of their actions." Young People don't refrain from voting because they're too busy effecting Real Change - that may be true of a select few deluded activists, who mistakenly believe that voting and direction action are mutually exclusive, but Ms. Thomas's comments provide no explanation for any statistically significant voting behaviour.
If this were a truly credible blog, I'd probably have some sort of witty closing to this entry.
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Most Young People who don't vote don't do so because they don't believe their votes matter, or because they perceive themselves as being too busy to pay attention, or because they're just plain ignorant and apathetic. However, those are the same reasons that most non-Young People who don't vote don't, so they do little to cast light on low voter turnout among Young People. This entry shall focus not on what I perceive to be the factors suppressing the absolute rate of votership among Young People, but rather on those suppressing the rate of votership among Young People relative to the rate of votership among non-Young People.
1. Few changes in government.
Most people my age (22) cannot recall any Prime Minister before Jean Chrétien. As far as we're concerned, the Liberals might as well have been in power since Confederation (as far as most of them are concerned too, actually). In Alberta, even I, more politically conscious at an earlier age than most of my peers, can barely recall Don Getty, and the Conservatives had been in power for a decade before my birth. The concept of a change in government is as foreign to us as to a young Zimbabwean. This must be a factor, but it can't be everything - after all, there have been longer periods of one party dominance in Canadian history (1897-1911, 1935-1957, 1963-1979), and there are plenty of provinces that have undergone changes in government over the last couple of years. Moreover, Zimbabwe's voter turnout is pretty high. No, there must be other factors.
2. The Age of Polling
Polling is more sophisticated than ever before. This means that the results of elections are known - within a single digit number of seats per party - before the polls open. In our minds, the process has become inverted: rather than the results being determined by how people vote on election day, people vote on election day to fulfill the prophecy of the poll. Is it any wonder that voting has less meaning to those of use too young to remember the uncertainty of the 1988 election?
3. A Declining Sense of Duty
Our grandparents' generation - the educated portions of it, anyway - voted as a matter of duty. They conveyed these values to our parents' generation. However, part of our parents' generation rebelled, resulting in some of the authority figures in our generation - parents, teachers, creepy guys outside of bus stations - not conveying to us the importance of voting. This effect would, logically, be amplified through the ages.
4. Young Politicians
Now, I don't know what your sentiments are on Young People who belong to political parties, Dear Readership, but to my recollection they were all doctrinary gazelle scrotums (scrota? Man, if this were a truly credible blog, I'd look that up). When electoral politics throughout our young lives are personified for us as nasal-voiced boys in ironed slacks with an evangelist's passion (for whatever set of beliefs they've purchased for ten dollars a year) and a propensity for wank-suckery, is it any wonder voting isn't "cool" or "hip"?
Let's be clear - despite the comments in the Journal by my Close Personal Acquaintance Melanee Thomas, it's not accurate to say that "Young people want to be engaged, but it has to be something where they can see the results of their actions." Young People don't refrain from voting because they're too busy effecting Real Change - that may be true of a select few deluded activists, who mistakenly believe that voting and direction action are mutually exclusive, but Ms. Thomas's comments provide no explanation for any statistically significant voting behaviour.
If this were a truly credible blog, I'd probably have some sort of witty closing to this entry.
