Unless you have been using this newspaper as a bird cage liner, you probably have noticed this coming Monday, October 18th is Election Day. Every city, town, village and county have candidates running for local councils and school boards. Aside from advertisements from many candidates, we have published profiles and platforms from as many people running for office as possible over the past two issues, and in this issue you will find even more. In our region alone we have well over fifty people running for office.
Considering the amount of complaining from many ratepayers over the past three years from nearly every city, village and county, I am expecting this election to be an exciting and well attended turnout. Unless you consider a thirty percent voter turnout well attended, I suspect that I have just been wasting my breath.
On average, roughly thirty percent is all that will ever come out to vote in municipal elections. Unless it is a federal election which usually experiences a whopping sixty-four percent voter turnout, on average municipal elections fair much less.
Is it that many people just don't care? Is it maybe that many are just ignorant of facts, or are people nowadays just plain lazy? A popular position is that it is the young adult that is the cause for poor voter turnouts. It has been said that the twitter generation is too preoccupied with vain pursuits preventing them from looking up long enough to discover that there is a social responsibility to exercise. According to many people, apathy and disinterest is the privy of the youth, and voting is a waste of time.
I don't buy into that at all. I truly believe that the young person I see with their pants dragging on the ground is waiting with bated breath to cast a vote. I am sure that the fella on the bus with his hat turned sideways thumbing away while texting his 'bro' or 'babe', is discussing who is the best candidate to be the Mayor in Wetaskiwin, or who should be sitting on the school board. As strong as these examples are to the contrary, I still don't believe that voter apathy is all in the hands of young people. In fact, it is my generation that currently has the vast majority of voter strength to wield, and it is precisely my generation, the baby boomers, that have shown the most disinterest in the democratic process. The young adult comes by voter apathy honestly because it has been handed down to them by their parents, and the cycle will continue with every generation.
Gone are the days when families sat around the living room and talked, where the mother and father would mentor their offspring on important issues. It was during those times, when the 'family' political position was expressed, which fuelled the interests in the youth entering the voter age.
If you ask someone if they plan to vote, in most cases the answer is “No.” I have asked many acquaintances this very question and the answer is usually is an unintelligible “Nah.” If you press them on why, the usual response you get is, “It doesn't matter” or “One vote does not make a difference.” On a larger scale, this type of apathetic influence can be found on the internet, a media where many young adults mill about getting their social conscientious stimulated. Influences like, “In strictly economic terms, voting makes no sense at all. It takes time away from useful activities and rarely is any single individual's vote likely to make much of a difference. So, why bother?” I found this nugget of wisdom, and much more like it on websites with high page rankings, making this type of social consciousness easy to access.
So what is the cause for meagre voter turnouts? I truly believe it is because we have it too easy in Canada. For many people, they like to complain about their elected officials, but in the end they either don't believe those complaints or just want others to take care of it. Ignorance is bliss, and therefore to cast a vote in an election would be just irresponsible because many people have not kept up with the issues. They don't really know who is running, nor have they made it their business to find out.
So when the next governing council raises your taxes without proper reasoning, or the school board decides to use a textbook or bring in a program that you feel is not appropriate, I sure hope the average armchair critic had pulled out the pry bar, peeled their backsides off the chair and voted. Because, it is not just a social right to vote, it is democratic responsibility. A responsibility that should be handed down to the youth. Because without the voter interest, apathy, disinterest and indifference will prevail and you may find people in our public offices that have no business occupying the seat of power.
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