Welcome back, we start off this school year with a federal election. This year Justin Trudeau called the election after only 2 years since the last election. This year’s election has been similar to the previous election, as we have a liberal minority government again.
According to this site, the people voting for these parties are all over the age of 18, but the majority of voters are between the age of 65 to 74. So what would it be like if younger people voted more? It is their future after all. Well, every time there is a federal election, my high school does a school vote. Something I’m often curious about is, what would it be like if the voting age was lowered? The more I think about it the more I don’t know.
I think lowering the voting age could have a good or bad impact. High schoolers are kids who can be very easily impacted, we can see this just based on their everyday life and the impact social media has on it. During the time of an election if they were allowed to vote, social media would very likely have the same impact. However this could be a good way to get the younger demographic involved, this year it was starting to be used more. I’ve seen leader Jagmeet Singh using tik tok to reach younger people. This is a very smart way to get more people involved, tik tok is one of the bigger social media platforms for young people, while they are on the app they could have a quick engaging tik tok pop up, that maybe catches their eye and gets them more interested. Here are two tik toks that NDP leader Jagmeet Singh has put up. Down below I’ve created an example of an image that could be posted on social media to get young people involved.
Something else to think about is teachers and parent influence, in class kids usually have the opportunity to learn about all the parties and do research that isn’t on their own time. This could be one of the benefits of having younger people vote. They already have a place in school to learn about what they care about, and start to build their own opinion. As they build their own opinion it leads to form their worldview. This effects where they are on the political spectrum, whether their further left or right. Starting to build and form your own opinions at a younger age, and getting the change to share and build on it at a deeper level, could be very beneficial to your development. and get a chance to have the right to express it in a more valuable way.
The day after our school vote, we got the results back. At my school NDP won, with 168 votes. In total they had 38.62% of the votes that were placed. During our school vote there are always the kids who vote to be “funny” and vote for a party they know isn’t what they really want. I think these kids, given the chance to actually vote would opt out, over actually going and placing their vote. It is the kids that care and take the time to learn and understand that I think should get the chance to vote for their future.