By Michelle Nielson
Published: Oct 11, 2014
For the past three decades voter turnout has been on a deep decline. Elections Canada reports that since the 90s we have gone from 70 per cent down to 61 per cent in the most recent federal election.
For BC, we saw only about 52 per cent voter turnout in our provincial election. Worse yet, Elections BC reported that for the 2011 Squamish Municipal Election only 41 per cent people showed up to vote. Well, that is 4,734 ballots for our town. Hello? For a young, passionate town I know we can do better than that!
So what is happening? What is this invisible undercurrent that is driving people to tune out instead of turning up? The Conference Board of Canada says that lower turnout is from a variety of factors like accessibility and less interest from young voters. They recommend solutions like voting online and engaging the youth more to make voting “more meaningful for first time voters”.
I think that they are dead wrong. The ‘no show’ vote was a vote in of itself. At the core this ballot says ‘I don’t trust government’. To me this is what we should be working on in order to fix our political system and increase voter turnout.
Trust is a sensitive and vulnerable emotion that is earned. It evokes words like integrity and certainty and accountability of an individual or thing or process. When government isn’t transparent, when government lacks accountability, when closed door deals are struck with private corporations in the interest of a few rather than the many, trust waivers. Trust in government for the past 40 years has been in deep decline. In a 2012 Ekos Poll they reported that only 28 per cent of Canadians trust our government is doing what is right. I can only imagine today’s statistics would be worse.
On November 15, Squamish residents will go to the polls to vote for a Mayor and Council for another 4 year term. Who can we trust?
To start, we have to trust ourselves and make the right choice. Starting with our ballot. We can protest. We can march. We can sing powerful songs like ‘Wake Up’ or ‘Intervention’ by Arcade Fire. We can spread the word and wear t-shirts, create a facebook page, host an event, plus we can write letters to all levels of government. But what we forget is that the most POWERFUL thing we can all do is cast a vote.
So Squamish, let’s get our VOTE ON in the next municipal election. Let’s start the dialogue now with our friends, colleagues, neighbours. Let’s protect this wonderful place and help it grow and flourish economically, environmentally and sociologically with healthy, trustworthy, visionary, ethical leadership.