A recent Elections Canada report encouraged local organizations to reach out to young voters, but some of Ottawa’s most visible youth-oriented organizations say they're not involved in that sort of work.
Elections Canada’s National Youth Survey Report examined the barriers that helped facilitate voter turnout of 38.8 percent for Canadians aged 18–24 during last May's federal election.
The study concluded that motivational and access barriers were the most common factors that dissuaded young voters from casting a ballot. Young aboriginal people and voters without a post-secondary education were least likely to vote.
Elections Canada profiled one young voter who chose not to go to the polls:
Alexis is a 21‑year-old youth who is unemployed and has less than a Grade 12 education. She has not voted in any election since she has been eligible to vote and attributes her lack of electoral participation to her lack of interest; she was not interested in the general election and is not interested in Canadian politics. She can't see the point in voting, and even if she had wanted to vote, she could not have got a ride to the polling station on voting day.
“I think it’s important to understand what those motivation factors are so we can address them and make sure they don’t face barriers when they decide to participate,” says Diane Benson, a spokesperson for Elections Canada.
Benson says civic education in high school is an important factor in educating young people about the importance of democracy before they are of legal voting age. In Ontario, all high school students need a half credit in civics in order to graduate.
But Ilona Dougherty, the executive director of Apathy is Boring, says that while civic education is helpful, it doesn’t go far enough to reach young people who have no motivation to cast a ballot. “It’s a lot harder to talk about motivation. I think that’s where we need to shift the dialogue,” Dougherty says. “We need to talk about why people aren’t voting and how we motivate them to vote.”
Another recent report [PDF] published by Samara, an organization that studies civic engagement in Canada, sheds some light on disengaged youth—and muses about why they don't vote.
"The young people we spoke to felt that politicians view their input as inconsequential and
unimportant," reads the report. "As a result, these young people never felt that they should engage in the first place."
The report's authors also say their interviewees didn't feel like politicians speak to young voters.
"The disengaged youth we spoke to felt that the political system made little effort to reach out to them. They asked why politicians do not speak to youth in terms that they can relate to, or why they do not try to make issues more appealing," the report read.
Election Canada’s final recommendations spoke to that outreach. It concluded that apathetic youth are best reached when politicians, teachers and family members speak to them directly. And local youth organizations also have a role to play. “Particular efforts should be made to reach youth with lower educational attainment, for example by directing attention to employment centres, remedial education programs and youth outreach centres,” the report says.
Two of Ottawa’s largest youth service organizations say youth voting isn’t currently a priority for them.
“We’re not working on any initiatives [to encourage youth to vote] at this point,” says Moira MacIntosh, a spokesperson for the National Capital Region YMCA.
Lina Harper, a spokesperson for the Youth Services Bureau of Ottawa, said in an email that the organization is currently not doing any outreach for youth voting.
In May 2011, Apathy is Boring released a report on youth engagement and mobilization in Toronto’s municipal election the previous year. The report concluded that most local organizations do not have the capacity and resources to effectively engage youth to vote.
“When a young person is looking for a job and they come to your employment centre, it’s really hard to talk to them about voting,” Dougherty says. She adds that local organizations need clear advice and tools from Elections Canada and groups like hers, which work on youth voting engagement full-time.
