Why People Don’t Vote.
I’ve read a few dozen tweets discussing how shameful it is that only 45% of eligible Ontarians voted in the most recent provincial election. It’s not shameful, so much as it is completely understandable.
Here are my guesses as to the top 5 reasons people didn’t vote:
- It’s unnecessarily difficult to vote: the fact that people need to travel to a specific location on a set number of dates is archaic bullshit. The fact that polls don’t open until 9am is archaic bullshit. The fact that I can’t vote online, even though I can complete a census online (one of these things is a legal requirement) is archaic bullshit. The core act of democracy should not be classifiable as archaic bullshit.
- Things aren’t bad enough: voting is an easy sell when people feel things might actually change. But in the lazy middle, where things are not perfect, but are good enough that you aren’t suffering, it’s easy to not see voting as a way to enact change, but instead as a burden.
- The candidates are crap, and communication by/about them is also crap: I haven’t voted FOR anyone in my career as a democratic citizen. I have voted AGAINST people, time and again. I’ve never been inspired by a candidate, or felt one was a leader. This is a problem, and I don’t think it is unique to me.
- Our democracy is broken: not going to dig too deep into this, but First Past the Post voting sucks.
- They scheduled the election for the same night as the Leafs season opener. Do they not know what country we’re in?
