Melanie Thomas: Can she win?

maplesyrup · May 26, 2004

"These kids grew up at a time that 'government' was a bad word," she says. "It
was all about debt, about cutbacks, no books for school. Why would you put faith in a government under these circumstances?"

Futurist David Baxter says the irony is that younger voters could have the power to overrule government cutbacks and to turn back tuition fee hikes.

"If they got excited about a particular issue, they could decide the future," says Baxter, executive director of the Vancouver-based Urban Futures Institute.

He acknowledges politics continues to be dominated by their parents' generation, which explains why Canadians have a 65-year-old prime minister.

"If you could tap into this generation of voters, you could see significant differences," he says. "The demographic isn't as big as the baby boomers. But most elections aren't won by landslides; they're won on the margins."

Extra efforts are being made to try to engage young people in the coming federal election. An ad hoc organization called Rush The Vote held a gala event at the Junos in Edmonton to encourage young people to become politically active. Nelly Furtado, the star of the event, admitted she had never voted.

How effective those efforts will be won't be known until after the election. There is skepticism.

"Just because Paul Martin puts on a leather jacket and shares a stage with Nelly Furtado doesn't mean that he's in touch with the issues of today's youth," says the NDP's Thomas, who voted for the Green Party in 2000.

"It looked really staged and could make young people feel like they're being used."

Maybe if Melanie and a few other people her age got elected we could bring the younger generation into the voting process thus keeping our democracy alive.

It seems like it is dying a slow death with fewer and fewer people voting each election.