Why did only half of Ontario Vote?
Oct. 6th, 2003 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carynb
Only 55.3% turnout in Ontario's recent provincial election. Ick.
I've got one anecdote that might skew the results away from the general idea that apathy or laziness is the cause, however.
Ontario has a huge recent immigrant / new citizen population. One such person works next to me, and he had some real questions about the whole process. As in, basic questions about the process - the difference between Federal and Provincial governments, how taxes work on each level, and stuff like that. Stuff that I would have thought would have been explained as part of the citizenship process, actually, but apparently isn't.
He considered voting to be his duty, especially as a new citizen - this is the first election here that he'd been eligible to vote in - but he wanted to be an informed voter, and was having trouble figuring out how to get informed. Try explaining any issue to someone who knows only the TV sound bites, without unduly influencing them with your own politics, and see how difficult it is.
Case in point: explaining taxes, and how the provincial government can raise, lower or add taxes as necessary. He makes the connection with one of the issues - McGuinty talking about an extra $.02/L gas tax which would go to municipal transit. He says, "but that only helps people in Toronto", my other office mate says "right", and I immediately counter with "But, it's an environmental issue - the more people riding transit, the cleaner our air, the better for everyone", and we stop the conversation dead there before we start debating the issue.
TV sound bites are too short to get any real information and the papers are way slanted, so we pointed him at the party websites. His English isn't good enough to wade through the language.
I don't know if he voted or not, in the end, but I know he was very frustrated by the whole thing. He wanted to vote, and he wanted to be a good, informed voter - but the information for that just wasn't available for him. If he's typical of new citizens, than this sort of thing may go a long way towards explaining the abysmal turnout numbers.
I'm not sure how to solve the problem, either. Certainly the basic questions about the process should have been explained as part of obtaining citizenship, but explaining the issues in language an intelligent person with limited English skills can understand? That's a more complex problem. I would think that the parties would try to offer information in a variety of languages, but they certainly didn't this year, at least not on the web. I just checked, and while all three main parties offer their complete platforms in English and French, the Liberals and NDPs offer only a 2 page summary of their stand on the issues in other languages, and the Tory's site doesn't even seem to offer that much.
I've got one anecdote that might skew the results away from the general idea that apathy or laziness is the cause, however.
Ontario has a huge recent immigrant / new citizen population. One such person works next to me, and he had some real questions about the whole process. As in, basic questions about the process - the difference between Federal and Provincial governments, how taxes work on each level, and stuff like that. Stuff that I would have thought would have been explained as part of the citizenship process, actually, but apparently isn't.
He considered voting to be his duty, especially as a new citizen - this is the first election here that he'd been eligible to vote in - but he wanted to be an informed voter, and was having trouble figuring out how to get informed. Try explaining any issue to someone who knows only the TV sound bites, without unduly influencing them with your own politics, and see how difficult it is.
Case in point: explaining taxes, and how the provincial government can raise, lower or add taxes as necessary. He makes the connection with one of the issues - McGuinty talking about an extra $.02/L gas tax which would go to municipal transit. He says, "but that only helps people in Toronto", my other office mate says "right", and I immediately counter with "But, it's an environmental issue - the more people riding transit, the cleaner our air, the better for everyone", and we stop the conversation dead there before we start debating the issue.
TV sound bites are too short to get any real information and the papers are way slanted, so we pointed him at the party websites. His English isn't good enough to wade through the language.
I don't know if he voted or not, in the end, but I know he was very frustrated by the whole thing. He wanted to vote, and he wanted to be a good, informed voter - but the information for that just wasn't available for him. If he's typical of new citizens, than this sort of thing may go a long way towards explaining the abysmal turnout numbers.
I'm not sure how to solve the problem, either. Certainly the basic questions about the process should have been explained as part of obtaining citizenship, but explaining the issues in language an intelligent person with limited English skills can understand? That's a more complex problem. I would think that the parties would try to offer information in a variety of languages, but they certainly didn't this year, at least not on the web. I just checked, and while all three main parties offer their complete platforms in English and French, the Liberals and NDPs offer only a 2 page summary of their stand on the issues in other languages, and the Tory's site doesn't even seem to offer that much.
