Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Our system's broken and I...I'll never vote again

Let me preface this by saying two things:

I do vote
I have very little interest in politics
This is my first attempt at writing anything about my views on politics and I expect to fuck it up a bit
This blog will never come overly political
The views in this post my come off as being naïve, uneducated or ignorant—but I’m okay with that.


Basically this all started with the drive to work this morning, listening to the radio where the local morning DJs were discussing how the youth of today don’t vote in elections. Yet again it was more harping on how the youth of today don’t bother to step outside our doors, that we’re lazy and I was waiting for a comment about getting off their damn lawns within a matter of moments.


It’s been pretty much a fact, something that people have been harping on for years. Every election it always becomes how the youth of today don’t care about politics, that you need to care about your leaders, that your one vote will change the world.

Yeah...

Right.

It’s becoming increasingly frustrating. I am a youth voter, I do vote but at the same time I still don’t feel like my voice is being heard. I don’t think any of the party leaders are giving a crap about our views or what we care about. Looking at the platforms for this year it’s all about family tax breaks, corporations and small business taxes and the war. Where is the help for education? A federal standing/input in the provincial minimum wage? A way of making housing actually affordable? More jobs?

I understand that this is a bit of a chicken and egg argument and really the old, white men who are running this country don’t need to listen to the views of the ‘youth vote’ but at the same time without engaging in us, without taking the time to listen to us and beyond making a brief appearance on Much Music, where is our engagement? You can drum up all the youth voting sites you want, make t-shirts, get local ‘celebrities’ and actual ‘celebrities’ to deem how cool voting is. You can continue to try to make voting cool, but I think that if there was a viable platform, if the leaders did take into account that youth would vote if you gave them something worth coming out for.

The other issue I find is that politics can get pretty complicated. Between the dirt slinging, the back and forth, the long debates, I’m often bored by five minutes into any discussion involving politics. I’ve looked at these websites trying to drum up the ever elusive ‘youth vote’ and while they’re great about educating people on /how/ to vote, there is very little information about the topics involved. Looking briefly over one website and the only information you get on topics is from the party’s official websites. If that’s not biased, I don’t know what else would be. If you could boil down the topics, who believed in what issue in an easy enough manner (maybe using those pretty graphics that the Liberal party seems to have), I’m sure it’d be easier to keep our ADD-like attention span that everyone seems to think youths have.

What was I talking about again?

Just kidding.

Will all this stop me from voting on May 2nd?

No.

I will continue to vote, if only because if I don’t vote I don’t get to complain.

And then what would be the fun in that?

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