Posted Sep. 1/05
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- Jon Pammett, political science professor and associate dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs and Management.
As Ottawa prepares to call another federal election, officials from Elections Canada will be readying their campaign to boost voter turnout.
Perhaps one of the biggest questions during this time will be whether such efforts actually entice young people to cast their ballots.
Voter turnout, especially among youth, is a growing problem in Canada, says Carleton’s Jon Pammett, political science professor and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Public Affairs and Management.
In fact, it’s at an all-time low.
In the late 1980s, the Canadian voting rate among first-time voters slipped well below half. In 2000, it plummeted to 22 percent, according to a 2003 survey that Pammett conducted with the University of Toronto’s Lawrence LeDuc for Elections Canada.
“All other things being equal, the voter turnout rate will continue to decline unless something happens to change the behaviour of younger people,” says Pammett.
Among those youth ages 18 to 24 who did not vote, a staggering 38 per cent cited “lack of interest” as their reason while over 41 per cent of those in the 25 to 34 age group gave the same reason for not voting.
Other democracies grapple with the same problem, including Britain. That country’s government has concocted a tongue-in-cheek campaign to appeal to young people. Television ads are aimed at youth who claim they don’t “do” politics. The ads ask them whether they care about traffic congestion or whether pubs close at 11 p.m.
“If they care about these things, then they should care about politics,” says Pammett.
Analyzing whether these campaigns resonate with young audiences is an uphill battle since researchers normally look at reasons for behaviour — not lack of behaviour, adds Pammett.
For now, Pammett is taking an inventory and examining the techniques of all the get-out-the-vote campaigns produced by some of the major democratic governments and non-partisan groups. He is doing this with the Sweden-based Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, a non-profit group that specializes in voter turnout.
As for Pammett’s prescription for improving voter turnout, he says there’s no magic solution.
“It’s a long-term problem. Eventually, things will bottom out. But it’s hard to know when that will happen.
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