It’s a few days past the big election here and we’ve recently been swamped with news stories about low voter turnout in the cities. After listening to weeks and weeks of “human interest” stories burbling on about how so many people want to see change in the political landscape we see the PC party gain seats rather than lose them. The NDP lost 50% (2) of their seats and are on the cusp of losing official party status. The Liberals lost seats as well. Rather than change, we’re in for more of the same.

Not that I’m complaining as I’ve yet to really find any government appealing at the moment…

However, I’m stunned by the excuses people are giving on the news for their missing votes. “I was out shooing pool“, “I had a hair appointment“, “I was watching the latest episode of XX TV show“, etc. Despite these pathetic excuses people still feel it’s their dawg-given right to complain about the election results.

Of special interest to me are the students. Yep. You know the ones – constantly complaining about the high cost of student loans and education but who can’t be bothered to show up and vote. It amazes me how any student can consider their issues important enough to complain about everywhere (verbally, blogs, student newspapers, TV and radio interviews) but can’t take the 10-20 minutes to show up at a polling station and VOTE.

Note: Been there, done that. Paid off the student loan after 7 years and am now paying for my degree course-by-course while working full time.

Even better, I’m tired of hearing “I don’t know enough about the political process, parties, platforms, etc.” excuse from students. You’re attending college or university. You have access to computers and libraries – and in some cases poli. sci. courses – there’s no reason on dawg’s green earth why you can’t take a few minutes to RESEARCH parties and their platforms or read about the provincial political system!

Political parties know they can ignore student issues because students don’t tend to vote. According to posters placed all around campus prior to the election (provided by the student union) less than 5% of eligable students voted in the last election. Lucky me. In a few decades my future will be in the hands of these students. I wonder how much lower the voter turn out will be then.

If you want change, if you want to make an impact on the world around you, if you want issues that matter to you to be taken seriously you can stop complaining and start with the simplest of tasks. Change your own behaviour. Get out and vote. Take instruction from Gandhi and “be the change you want to see“.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.