When Rodney MacDonald calls the election that every political
watcher expects him to call sometime in the next few months, the
economy is sure to be a major issue. That’s a given, considering the
world’s financial meltdown and the shockwaves being felt across the
spectrum from individual workers to entire industries. But the premier
of Nova Scotia can’t do much about global money woes. A better election
issue is the election itself, and whether we can figure out how to fix
the problems the democratic process is facing. After all, this is where
Canadian democracy was born, an achievement the province marked last
year with Democracy 250, the organization trumpeting democracy’s
two-and-a-half-century birthday. The upcoming election will be the
first vote of Nova Scotia’s next 250 years. We should try to getit
right.
The trouble, as politicians see it, is we citizens are putting
democracy in crisis by shirking our duty to vote. Since 1990, voter
turnout has been tanking across the country, with last fall’s federal
election hitting a record low of 58.8 percent. But worse than the
general slide is the oft-repeated story inside the numbers that old
people vote and young people don’t. “Not only are young people
participating less than their elders, their willingness to participate
appears to be declining over time,” says a report from Elections
Canada, the government body whose website includes crossword puzzles
and “SElections trivia” in its youth-oriented “Games Corner.”
Nova Scotia’s politicians are so concerned about the voting
situation, that in late 2006 they formed a committee. The Select
Committee on Participation in the Democratic Process is mandated “to
consider measures designed to increase the percentage of Nova Scotians
voting in an election.” Its deadline to file a report was June 30,
2007. At the committee’s first meeting, in October 2007, chair Michel
Samson said “one of the particular issues regarding voting, I think
it’s all agreed, is that the numbers for anyone 25 and under are
particularly dismal.”
The committee also realized that doing a serious job of a serious
matter would require serious time—like a year—so a new deadline of
September 1, 2008 was chosen for the report. That date has come and
gone, and although the report is currently being written, Samson could
not be reached to say if it will be ready before the next election, or
to discuss what recommendations it will make.
In testimony before the committee, John Hamm, the former premier who
co-chaired Democracy 250, explained what he found out about young
voters. “Like most Nova Scotians, I was shocked to learn that 75
percent of youth under 25 didn’t vote.” The main reason, he discovered
through visits to schools and other rap sessions, is that students
aren’t being taught enough about the democratic process in grade
school. “In fairness to the students, something is wrong and needs tobe
fixed.”
I believe that children are the future, too, but it’s disingenuous
for Hamm to pin low voter turnout on the education system. To be
eligible to vote in Nova Scotia, a person must have lived here during
the six months before the election; university students arriving at the
start of September could only vote in elections in March or April, then
they go home for the summer. Of the 21 elections held since 1933, just
two have been in March or April.
A former staffer for one of Hamm’s ministers recently told me that
it is not an accident—the incumbent politicians are scared of
students’ radical sensibilities, so they time elections to exclude
them. Scheduling isn’t the only factor in declining turnout, of course.
Modern cynicism, government ineptitude, the internet’s ability to let
people think globally and act globally…these and more are culprits.
But of all the lessons in discouragement, shutting out university
students is the easiest one for a premier to dole out. Don’t you agree,
premier MacDonald?
Why don’t you vote? Let me know at editor@thecoast.ca.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2009.
