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I think an obvious way we can aid young voters in making informed decisions about elections is to provide them with a list of librarian-approved resources.  The magic word…Pathfinder.

Here are the resources I have found so far, please add more if you find any good ones.

www.getyourvoteon.ca

This is by far my favourite site.  The format is appealing, information is relevant and organized logically.  And there is a lot information available on the site.  This non-partisan initiative was created for the 2006 election and has been maintained since by a group of young people from Check Your Head, a youth global education network in Vancouver.

www.elections.ca

Elections Canada is an independent, non-partisan agency that reports to Parliament. It does have a special section for youth and useful information for the young voter but I don’t think that the site is very appealing to young people.  It doesn’t look very appealing and some people may be bothered by the “puzzles and games” section (seriously?!).

www.studentvote.ca

Student Vote is another non-profit, non-partisan agency. They work across the country to encourage civic awareness and community participation in young students (i.e. grade school and high school students).

www.thedemocracyproject.ca

The Democracy Project is a new national non-partisan initiative sponsored by the Dominion Institute and Check Your Head. Youth are encouraged to use the site to post questions and discuss issues. An interesting new project sponsored by this group is Youth Text; young Canadians are encouraged to text individual parties their questions and comments about the issues to make more informed choices.

Young people are less likely to vote than adults.

There has been a lot of research and campaigning into voter mobilization, i.e. getting those likely to vote for you out to the polls. This is especially true in the case of young voters who are known to be fickle and have short attention spans and so need a push right before the election to get them to the polls. There is also a lot of research in why young people don’t vote.

Here are some reasons identified by researchers as to why young people may not vote:

• They live transitory lives, with most of their time spent at college/university but identifying home as the place where their family is. Most don’t register to vote in their new community and probably don’t know about absentee ballot options (I know it wasn’t something that I really thought about when I had moved away for university). Learning more about their candidates back home isn’t a high priority.

• They don’t feel that their voice matters.

• They don’t trust politics or have confidence in politicians.

• There’s too much information available. They don’t know where to start looking and what sources they should trust.

• Because young voters don’t vote, they aren’t regarded as an important target group, so politicians don’t court them. Issues that may primarily influence this group aren’t given a lot of support.

• Politicians are viewed as not speaking the same language as young voters or conversely talking down to them.

How can we increase young people’s awareness of civic issues? How do we make them see the importance of civic elections? Should this be a responsibility that we take?

Here are a few articles you can refer to learn more about this issue:

January 2005: 2004 General Election Two articles on youth participation and the 38th general election.

July 2003: Youth Participation in Elections
Why are they voting less? How can they be engaged?

Jenkins, R. (2004). A lack of commitment: The key to voter turnout. Canadian Journal of Marketing Research, 22(1), 15-21.

Milan, A. (2005). Willing to participate: Political engagement of young adults. Canadian Social Trends, (winter), 2-7.

O’Neill, B. (2007). Indifferent or Just Different? The Political and Civic Engagement of
Young People in Canada. Charting the Course for Youth Civic and Political
Participation. Ottawa: Canadian Policy Research Networks.