Connecting with dozens of council and school board candidates to find out if their issues and concerns match yours might seem like a daunting task.
But thanks to a 17-year-old Tri-City Grade 12 student, voters will have all that information and more at their fingertips with votemate.org, a civic election guide for all cities in Metro Vancouver.
“You could go from not knowing anything to everything you need to know and more that quickly,” said Laef Kucheran, who has spent 400 hours since the summer gathering information on 759 candidates.
Here's how it works: Candidates are approached via email to ask if they will submit a biography, a photo and policy information based on issues solicited from both voters and candidates.
“I make sure there isn’t anything too outlandish,” said Kucheran, adding that three candidates in Vancouver wanted to pull soldiers out of Iraq, a federal, not municipal, issue.
The information is uploaded on votemate.org, which works on smartphones, tablets and computers, with a brief introduction and more information on candidates as you dive deeper.
Of course, the more candidates who participate, the better so voters can make a clear choice. So far, about 20% of candidates have signed up, with more jointing every day.
When candidates don’t bother to participate, Kucheran has a very simple method to get them to cooperate: He lets them know when their opponent has signed up.
“That’s worked incredibly well,” he told The Tri-City News. "They all want to support a project like this. It’s innovative and it’s good for the youth vote as well.”
He created a similar candidate guide for the 2017 provincial election, prompted by concerns about voter apathy, especially among young voters, and received submissions from more than a third of the 370 candidates.
Kucheran, who attends school at the Inquiry Hub in Coquitlam and is doing VoteMate in part as a school project, also plans to have a version ready for next year's federal election.
“Voter apathy is a big problem in Canada and most of the western world because we have democracy," he said. "We have it pretty easy and a lot of people aren’t interested or aren’t interested in politics, and it turns them off. This is something I feel will make a difference.”
