Students who are out of the loop politically might be able to get the help they need to get back in for the upcoming provincial election.
The Alliance of BC Students has launched its Count on Our Vote campaign with a goal to empower young people to vote, said Alex McGowan, chair of ABCS.
The campaign will focus on engaging young people at post-secondary institutions across the province in an effort to combat political parties’ lack of attention to young people.
“May 9 is about the worst time you could possibly pick for young people,” McGowan told The Tri-City News. “The low voter turnout among young people is caused by barriers.”
Many believe young adults demonstrate a disinterest in politics at all levels of government.
But McGowan said the lack of interest isn’t the main issue: “We recognize that young people don’t vote enough but we also recognize that’s not caused by any apathy, that the low voter turnout among young people is caused by barriers.”
For students, a May 9 provincial election comes at one of the toughest times — they would have to consider voting right at the end of exam periods and at the start of summer jobs.
On top of that, students who live in rental housing will be asked to provide a proof of address as a requirement to vote, forcing students to show mail they may not have, receive mail to a location in flux or don’t have a legal mailbox.
Political parties also fail to reach out to young supporters and making sure they show up to the polling stations.
According to McGowan, parties are spending money on forms of outreach that target older generations, like landline phone banking and TV/radio ads, or canvassing to single-family home neighbourhoods where young people don’t live in.
“[Make] sure that we’re engaging the young people through the media that they use,” he said.
The campaign hopes to fight all of that, to allow young adults to receive the same attention from the political parties.
“Our campaign is mostly on the ground… where we have student volunteers out talking to students, and we’re getting people to sign a pledge to vote,” McGowan said.
“We could send them information about registration, the community, then we can follow up with them to make sure they have everything they need when election time comes along.”
The ABCS will be on some of the province’s major post-secondary institutions such as UBC-Okanagan, Kwantlen Polytechnic, Langara College, Capilano University, UBC and UVic.
“Political parties are leaving a big gap in terms of their outreach to young people; we’ve also recognized that’s something that we can do,” McGowan said. “We can be on campus and fill that void.”
Students can sign the pledge form and receive information for the upcoming election at countonourvote.ca.
