It’s rare that you can get an entire room to agree with you at an all candidates forum, but Brooke Malinoski did it at the one in Yorkton. She was the lone candidate to get spontaneous applause at the event. She did this by using her closing remarks to talk about the importance of getting out the youth vote, something everyone in the room – including all four candidates on stage – could support.
It’s also telling that while the room agreed that getting voters under 25 to the polling station was an important goal, very few people in the room were actually voters under 25. Malinoski herself was one of the few people in that age group, and might have been one of the youngest voters in the room that night. She recognized this herself, telling the crowd to talk to their children, grandchildren and young relatives to get out and vote, but while her message was well received it was not actually reaching the people who needed to hear it. And how could it? They weren’t actually there.
Voter apathy among young people is high, and it’s a major struggle in ridings like Yorkton-Melville, which has had exactly two MPs since it was established in 1968. It’s a safe seat, and when they see a candidate walk to victory, they tend to think the entire exercise is pointless. There begins to be a feeling that no matter what you do, your vote doesn’t matter, so there’s no point in caring. There might be people that think that the election is controlled by old people anyway, so there’s no point in trying to push issues important to young people.
The election is controlled by the older generations for a simple reason, they vote. The election isn’t controlled by the young because they don’t. When you have a voter turnout of under 40 per cent, you don’t give politicians a reason to care about your issues. A party has more to gain by talking about prescription drug plans than student debt, for example, because a prescription plan is going to benefit people who actually get to the polls. They are both important issues, of course, but you only have so much time for campaigning and so much money for advertising, so you prioritize what matters to get people who cast their ballots. This, of course, further convinces the young people that their voices don’t matter.
If they want their voices to matter, they have to make them matter. If every single person in this riding under the age of 25 cast their ballots, it would lead to a major change in the issues that candidates follow and push forward. For right or wrong, politicians follow their supporters, they want to satisfy the people who will vote for them and put them in office. If it turns out that the young people are who puts them in office, they’re going to look at policies that matter to young people, because that would become a demographic that matters. The voter apathy among that demographic is the entire reason why they don’t have their voices heard – why listen to someone who will not support you anyway?
Voter apathy among youth might have been highlighted by the Liberal candidate, but it’s not a Liberal issue. It’s an issue that exists no matter what your views or political leaning, it’s important because it’s the only way the youth will make an impact in politics. Everyone under 25 should vote, because everyone over 18 should vote. Do it on Monday.
