The Vote

One of the most popular essay topics for undergrad Political Science students is 'Voter Turnout'.  In my final year at U of T I took a course called Party Politics, or some variation of that. The course was taught by professor Michael Stein, a wonderful professor, who was very ummm professorial in his approach. He seemed to care more about the material than the academic process, which is the kind of professor we need more of. The first essay assignment was a ten pager due at Christmas. The list of topics was fairly long. but when Prof. Stein returned them he announced that half of the class had written on the declining voter turnout in Canada. I had chosen to write about the electoral reform proposal in the Ontario provincial election, but the voter turnout wasn't far behind.

Looking back on it now, i'm a little confused about why my class cared so much but Canadians at large don't seem as interested. Either way I think that the declining voter turnout is tragic, and worthy of great more concern than we are giving it.

In 2007 only 52.1% of eligible voters turned out to cast their vote. Thats ridiculous, thats insane. If we were running a poll or survey, than yes a 52% sample is huge, but for an election thats not acceptable. in 1975 (the farthest back Elections ontario publishes on their main page) voter turnout was just shy of 70%. I suppose that I can't come up with any new theory about why our democratic participation is nose diving into apathy but I can certainly address some of the causes.

Most people point to younger generations and say 'They are the problem, they aren't voting'   this is true, they/we aren't, in fact I believe that something like on 25% of eligible voters under 30 actually vote (a figure I pulled out of my head, that I heard once somewhere, don't take as gospel).    I often hear the same response from many of my peers when asked about participation; 'I don't vote cause they are all the same and they all suck'   I call BULLSHIT, that has become the cliched automated response of our generation, apparently its the easy way to say 'I'm too lazy' without actually admitting that you don't know what your talking about. Only once have I ever spoken to someone who could intelligently back up this statement (Winnie) and it sounds like she is going to vote anyways.

I guess the biggest problem I have with this aweful, pathetic apathy is that people still complain about politicians, and how Stephen Harper/Paul Martin/Jean Chretien......./whoevers name is easy to remember when needing to sound intellectual...is destroying the country.   I am sure glad that people can notice these things, but if they didn't vote than they are part of the problem.   Voting is the one part of being a Citizen that I feel is a fundamental obligation. In fact, I believe that a system of fines for not voting should be in place. This would not mean that you would have to pick a candidate, if you truly felt that all the candidates were detestable, than spoil the ballot. A spoiled ballot is counted as such, and if counted in great quantities could be a signal for change. In fact if large portions of the ballots were spoiled, it would deligitimize the elected government, and possibly cause an emergency electoral reform.

Let's look at how essential voting is. Using the Ontario election of 2007 as an example.

52.1% of the electorate actually showed up to vote. Thats 4.5 million out of an eligible 8.6 million voters.   of that 4.5 million  approximately 1.9 million voted for the winning party (the liberals) thats 42% of the valid ballots cast.  So what we have is a government in power who was chosen by less than 25% of the eligible public.    Again, in a random survey that would stand up as a valid sample size. But we know that this is not a random 25% that has cast this ballot don't we.  earlier I mentioned that only 25% of youths are voting, and it has been drilled into our heads (at least in poli sci) that the educated upper class tends to vote much more regularly, and with much higher turnout than any other demographic. Now I'm not in the mood to try to figure out who the educated upper class is, but a reasonable guess would say that I mean wealthy, white people.

So what we are left with is a party in power that was only picked by rich white people. Isn't that what people have bitched about all along??? well guess what, its not some conspiracy, its a lack of voting, if your not voting, than you are contributing to this problem.

This feels eerily like the election for Head Girl and Head Boy in High School, ever notice that it was usually the really "popular" cliqueish ones who won?? Im guessing because the only people who actually gave two shits were their friends.

This blog hasn't turned out to be as coherent or intelligently phrased as I had hoped, so perhaps I will edit it later. But the end message is this.   Voting is an essential OBLIGATION of citizenship, a government cannot govern according to your desires if they don't know what you want, they arent going to chase you down to ask you they'll just assume you agree with them.

If you don't vote then you can't complain about how bad the government is doing, because you helped them do that bad job.

On October 14th do one thing for your country.  take the five minutes needed to mark an 'X' on the ballot. If you don't know about the party's then find out. Every party has their platforms available on their respective websites, and believe it or not, the platforms are not crazy legalese, or even that long they are, written for the average voter. so its not terribly difficult.

Give it a shot, lets see if we can't get more than 52% of the vote out.