The discussion on youth voting needs to be recentered to increase their engagement.
One of the most common issues that’ve been plaguing many election cycles is poor voter turnout among young people. Nearly all democratic nations have experienced significant difficulties securing young adult voters without substantial changes to youth engagement strategies. If elections continue to produce poor turnouts from young voters, the issue must be recentered toward including youth interests in campaign promises and platform commitments.
Political parties are failing their youth by not working for them, the youth aren’t failing politics by not voting, they’re simply expressing disdain for a system that isn’t targeting them.
By staying home and not casting a ballot, young people are highlighting their desire for attention; they’re effectively saying, “I’m not included, I don’t have a dog in this fight.” If parties truly care about young people, the burden of representing them rests solely on their shoulders.
The simple answer to poor voting trends is that young people simply don’t care about politics enough to vote—but this isn’t the whole truth. Young people are incredibly active politically, and some of the most vocal about their opinions. According to Statistics Canada, young people are more likely to join a protest than any other demographic. The narrative that young people don’t care about politics must be abandoned.
Reducing voter turnout to apathy is a quick and easy answer to declining youth voters. It would make sense in theory, for example, voting representation in Canada increases by age demographic—therefore, the answer could be that young people simply don’t care about politics enough to enact their civic duty.
The logic behind youth disengagement is based in truth; it’s fair to say that most young people aren’t moved by every bill and policy. However, if the recent government upheaval in Nepal has taught us anything, it’s that Gen Z does care about politics—the question should stop being “why don’t young people vote?” Instead, “how can we reach young people to get them to vote?”
Political parties need to target young voters; this includes listening to their voices and campaigning on what they care about, or else another election will become pointless for a significant share of voters. A solution to this issue is for young voters to refrain from voting altogether. If the bottom were to fall out of the youth voting base, every election cycle for years would have issues such as post-secondary funding at the top of the agenda.
Thinning a youth vote to historic lows would express a need for change to political leaders and parties. The further the share of voters slips to zero, the more apparent that young voters are being ignored. There’s not one single issue that young voters care about specifically, but the poor voter turnout represents a strong disconnect between parties and the youth.
If the status quo is maintained, poor youth representation will continue to be an issue, and another generation of young voters will be disconnected from parties and abstain from voting.
Isaac-Paul Hofbauer is a second-year Political Studies student and The Journal’s Opinion’s Editor.
Tags
Voter Turnout, Voting, Youth, Youth voters
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