Youth suffrage

The Times’ youngest columnist, Grace Conroy, has just reached voting age, and will be able to cast her first ballot in the next federal election. Anyone who has read her column as she travelled to Chile for a year of exposure to a new culture, language and landscape knows she is a bright, interested and engaged young woman.

It was a pleasure then, to hear her excitement at the idea of being able, finally to vote. Young people are a demographic underrepresented in the polls.

It’s worthwhile to question why that is. For at least another 20 years, an aging population will inevitably be the status quo, as we move through the bulk of boomers and the bottleneck of a shrinking population. Women like Conroy, barely finished adolescence, are a benefit to the system, injecting youthful opinions into that aging mass.

And yet for a large part, despite campaigns and studies and countless efforts to change it, young people don’t vote. They feel disenfranchised from what seems to be a rigged system, underrepresented and alienated. Or they feel voting is an ineffective part of democracy, preferring to participate in protests and campaigns to have their voices heard.

This paper has also explored the topic, with contributor Mike Harper—himself on the cusp of the boomer generation—reaching out to the young people of the County to discover why more residents under the age of 40 don’t vote. Solid conclusions are hard to come by.

While there have been many suggestions offered to improve the democratic nature of Canada’s political system, one that is rarely talked about is youth suffrage.

There is an argument that Canada’s minimum voting age of 18 is an outdated, arbitrary number in an era with unprecedented access to information and education. Young people are more engaged, more aware than they have ever been.

Some are even paying taxes, as kids 16 or even younger are beginning to work and make a basic income.

The decisions our governments make affect youth. A young, informed person should be allowed to have a say when it comes to their education, social services and even the infrastructure they will inherit in the future.

But beyond any other argument is the idea of valuing the engagement that comes with the ability to vote. If that value is instilled in our next generation while they still see the world with the fresh, imaginative naivety of a teenager, perhaps we could do away with some of that feeling of disengagement.

There is the argument that a child does not have sufficient life experience or understanding to vote, and their participation would be detrimental to the system. Of course, at some point this is true: a fiveyear- old wouldn’t have an adequate grasp of the concept of democracy. But a 16-year-old might. And life experience, education or even comprehension of the issues are not prerequisites for anyone over the age of 18 who wants to cast a ballot. Why then should we exclude the kids?

mihal@mihalzada.com