.....and article from the Ottawa Citizen
Get out there and vote!
Democracy requires active, continual participation
Don Butler, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Monday, January 23, 2006
Exercise your franchise. A curious phrase, don't you think? It conjures up images of voters wheezing on treadmills or pumping iron, desperately trying to whip their flabby democratic muscles into shape.
But on reflection, the expression is really quite apt. After all, the act of voting is how citizens keep their democracy fit. Without the workout of an election, democracy would quickly sink into morbid obesity.
Journalist Joe Schlesinger puts it another way. "Elections," he writes, "are to democracy what weddings are to marriage. In democracy, as in marriage, you have to work at it or lose it."
Whatever metaphor you prefer, the message is the same: voting is a right and responsibility of every citizen who values living in a democracy. But as Canadians vote today, our collective franchise is in dire need of a Participaction plan. Its abs are turning to flab, its glutes are going soft, its pecs in peril.
After averaging a respectable 75 per cent for decades, turnout in federal elections started falling in the 1990s, bottoming out at just fewer than 61 per cent of eligible voters in 2004 -- the lowest in Canadian history.
In the 1990s, Canada placed 109th among 163 nations ranked for voter turnout by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, behind such democratic powerhouses as Algeria, Mozambique and Togo. But hey, at least we beat the United States, way down in 140th place. No "American-style" voter turnout here, thanks very much!
Increasingly, we seem to agree with the elderly woman who once told TV host Jack Paar, "I never vote. It only encourages them." Still, our indifference stands in stark contrast to attitudes in parts of the world that haven't yet evolved our level of democratic complacency.
Just last month, Canadians watched admiringly as more than 10 million Iraqis defied death threats to vote for their first freely elected government. A year earlier, a not-dissimilar scene played out in Ukraine.
It makes you wonder what's gone wrong here. Why does the beauty of the ballot no longer seduce us? Can we do anything to rekindle that lovin' feeling? Or is it gone, gone, gone?
In truth, many Canadians still take their responsibility to vote very seriously. In the 2000 election, more than 80 per cent of those age 58 and older say they voted, according to a study done for Elections Canada by political scientists Jon Pammett of Carleton University and Lawrence LeDuc of the University of Toronto.
For those between 38 and 57, voting rates slipped somewhat, but remained respectable. The big decline came among those 37 and younger, where the drop-off in voting levels was precipitous, falling to just 22.4 per cent for 18-to-20-year-old first-time voters.
Why is this happening? "There's no real easy answer," says Mr. Pammett, adding it doesn't appear to be related to active distaste for the political process. "The people who are most negative, the kind of 'pox on all your houses' people," he says, "are more likely to be people in their 40s and 50s. Young people are more likely to cite disinterest or impediments like registration, or being too busy."