I had an interesting online twitter exchange with @mengbers a few weeks back that still has me thinking. The conversation was about voter turnout at the polls. It has always irked me that people encourage people to vote no matter what. I mean, if you haven’t got a clue what is going on, you don’t know who the candidates are or what they stand for, should you really vote? In my mind, no. So the conversation revolved around what constitutes an informed voter.
@mengbers felt that informed was a relative concept and who was to decide who was informed? While I agree, there are various levels or degrees of being informed, I think most people know if they are informed enough to vote. In fact, the evening of the federal election, I was sitting in a pub waiting for the results when I overheard the people at the table next to us ask which election was going on. They didn’t know if it was federal or provincial or municipal -I think we can all agree, that is uninformed.
The point I made was that we are encouraging residents (sorry @ian_mccor) or citizens, to vote just for the sake of voting. I believe the issue is that we need to encourage people to become informed first. Once people are informed, they will naturally form an opinion and consequently be interested in making their opinion heard – after all, who doesn’t want to be heard?
But I think the issue goes even deeper than this. The issue is about, I’m sorry to use what is becoming an overused phrase, citizen engagement. I believe that a low voter turnout at the polls is an indication of a disengaged population. People put their time and energy into what interests them, into areas that concern them. Although people say they don’t have time to get informed, what they really mean is it is too low on their priority list.
I have talked to a couple people at the County about ways we can make a concerted effort to increase citizen participation in the next municipal elections. The response I received was basically to say it isn’t an area they are overly concerned about. The average voter turnout for Strathcona County tends to be in the low to mid 30%. Apparently, this is on the high side when compared to other municipalities. And apparently, we are ok with mediocrity.
What do you think? Is an average turnout at the polls good enough? Is a satisfied, complacent and uninformed constituency ok? Should we not be encouraging people to become informed and engaged?
