Low Voter Turnout In Canada

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Trends often show that specific groups of people often tend to have a lower voter turn-out, including youth. “Considerable research demonstrates that voting rates among young people are declining well beyond life cycle fluctuations.” (Chareka, Sears, & Chakera:2006, p. 524) This issue is a very important one, seeing as Canada’s youth is the future of our country. Without youth voting, they are not being represented and their voices are not being heard. This may create an overall disinterest in politics and challenge our democratic system we currently have in place. Many Canadians “...fought long and hard for this right, overcoming gender, racial, religious, or administrative obstacles to ensure women, judges, persons with disabilities and …show more content…
(in this case, a vote for our prime minister to best represent our views and opinions)

Factors Contributing to a Low Voter Turn-out Unfortunately, “a 2013 Parliament of Canada study concluded that more young voters than ever are dropping out of electoral participation at all levels of government. Worse still, their apathy is permanent. They don’t start voting as they get older, which is one of the key reasons the average participation rate in Canada is dropping.” (Dear young people: Not voting? No one cares, 2015) But why is this? It has been argued that in today’s society, many young people do not vote due to the fact that we live in a more technologically advanced age, allowing us to have a greater access to our interests and constant instant gratification. The article For and Against Lowering the Voting Age found the following: It is variously pointed out that more young people will vote for participants in television programmes such as “X Factor” and “Britain’s Got Talent” than vote for parties in a …show more content…
The youth of Canada have a low voter turn-out in federal elections. This may be because the age to vote is not young enough, technology advancements, education levels, bad habits formed, or even the great accessibility to their interests that many generations before did not have. This issue could be solved through lowering the age to vote, have the ability to vote online, introduce mandatory voting, or even integrating the registration process into schools curriculum. This is something that will definitely affect the future of Canada if not corrected. Although it has been shown that youth view voting as an obligation and an important process, they are choosing not to vote. Is this true then? This contradiction leads me to believe that either more youth are voting than we think and we will begin to see a change, or perhaps they truly do not view this as important and more research should be
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