Those who say young people don’t care about election issues might be surprised at what’s recently been happening at Canadian universities.
Vote mobs have been sweeping the country, beginning at the University of Guelph and landing in Regina and Saskatoon last week.
Events were also scheduled for Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and several British Columbia campuses in the last week.
“We thought it was important to get Regina youth to be more involved,” said one of the Regina organizers, Yasaman Soofi, after the April 20 event.
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About 100 students took time out from writing finals and cleaning out on-campus residences to race through campus buildings singing O Canada, wavingflagsandsigns proclaiming their key issues, and encouraging others to vote.
The events are non-partisan and designed to boost the participation rate of the youngest voters.
In 2008, just 37 percent of the approximately three million voters under age 25 cast their ballots.
“We don’t really care who you vote for as long as you vote,” said Soofi.
Vote mobs originated after a call to action by Canadian television satirist Rick Mercer. In one of his “rants” in March, he noted that the political parties target all voters except young adults.
“Do the unexpected,” he urged voters. “Take 20 minutes out of your day and do what young people all over the world are dying to do – vote.”
Younger voters heard the call and responded, using social media to spread the message far and wide.
A youth advocacy organization that formed in 2010, found at www.lead-now.
subscriber section=news, none, none
ca, offers a vote mob base and Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are all essential tools used to organize.
You don’t have to be young to join the free site but you do have to adopt the technology.
Throughout this campaign there has been discussion of social media’s role. After the English leaders’ debate, observers noted 38,000 tweets from Twitter users, or about one every two seconds.
David McGrane, political science professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said there isn’t enough Canadian research yet to say how much impact the new technologies have on voters.
Most candidates have websites, and some are using Facebook and Twitter.
But McGrane said they are using social media to their own end.
“It’s extremely ineffective for any politicians to do a broadcast telling everybody to vote,” he said. “That’s not how you win.
“In terms of politicians, they’re going to be tweeting to their people. They’ll be (Facebook) friends with their people.”
McGrane said if a nonpartisan agency such as Elections Canada, on the other hand, used social media to engage young voters that would be a better way to boost turnout.
On the Elections Canada website, chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand has posted a video message to young adults urging them to “shape your world.”
Dan Celis, a marketing student at the University of Regina, said students have to get more involved because politicians are not representing their interests.
McGrane said students themselves can help by posting “I voted today” on their Facebook status, or tweeting the same message. Their friends and followers will then see the message and can follow suit.
