Online voting is not the solution to student apathy

* This editorial appeared in the Feb. 5 issue of the Xaverian Weekly

As students head into their annual electoral exercise, choosing who will be their representatives for the next year, the word on the tip of everyone's lips is "turnout."

In the hopes of boosting turnout, the latest tactic of our elected representatives hasn’t been to boost engagement or make students care more about the election. Instead, they have chosen to jeopardize the very legitimacy of the vote and its result by bringing the polling stations into the bedrooms of every student.

Online voting is a relatively new technology that has evolved greatly since the days of online polls for People Magazine about Paris Hilton's new puppy. But students' unions across the country are now harnessing that same online technology for their own elections.

At more and more campuses across the country, students will no longer make their mark on a piece of paper, but click their mouse on a screen. And each of those unions should be ashamed.

The purpose of an election is to elect new representatives of the people to student government where their concerns will be addressed. To fail to engage that populace with issues that matter to them, to fail to reach out to students and make them believe in each candidate's abilities to work for them, voter turnout drops.

For the past few years, unions across the country have been struggling with lower and lower voter turnout, and now they're throwing in the towel one after the other. They have begun appealing to each student's laziness, rather than their sense of democratic duty.

Just because a certain percentage of students are easily convinced to log on to a website and click-to-vote one day of the year does not mean that they are active participants in their union year-round. The challenge students' union executives from coast to coast now face is finding a way of extending that one-day of engagement to the rest of the year.

If this cannot be accomplished, if students cannot believe in the effectiveness of their ballot to extend beyond voting day, regardless of how they cast it, online voting results will begin to dwindle just like their paper counterparts.

Putting the vote online for an Internet-savvy audience is akin to drawing pictures with crayons for the local preschool kids when asking them what kind of snack they want after their nap. Just because you address something in terms your constituents will understand doesn't mean you're reaching them, even if a lot of them happen to respond. Students are smart, sooner or later they'll realize that their students' unions are still ignoring them, but in a seemingly more accessible package.

Online voting is a temporary fix for an issue that has yet to be fully addressed by any Canadian students' union. It's like a Band-aid on a bullet wound, and student bodies are losing blood faster than their elected leaders can figure out why, let alone before they can try and stop it.

When the electorate can no longer see the legitimacy of the election, when they cannot see democracy in action, engagement drops. For our democratic system relies on far more than role-playing democracy, it relies on the image of democracy being carried out. And when we rest our faith on a simple click of a mouse, followed by a computer printout with the name of our next executive, where will our faith lie?

If our elected representatives are truly concerned about boosting voter turnout, then perhaps they should focus their energies first on representing students' concerns — unfinished protests, residence misconduct, hockey tournaments gone awry and sky-rocketing student fees, to name a few — rather than their own legacy of record-breaking voter turnout.

Being a member of a students' union executive is a thankless job, it's true. Hours upon hours of dedicated work are often accomplished with little recognition or lots of criticism. But just as voter engagement relies on the image of an active democracy, so the image of democracy relies on elected officials who follow through on promises, work visibly for their electorate and set realizable goals. Voters have an extraordinarily low tolerance for elected officials who think of their own legacy before those who put them in office.

You want high voter turnout? Think of the people, and then they will think of you.

By Danielle Webb

Ottawa-StFX rivalry heating up

Hello friends,

For those of you who've noticed an apparent rivalry with a certain Ottawa university that has been brewing as of late, you'll be interested in this update.

If you don't know already, the University of Ottawa Elections Bureau has boldly stated they intend to beat our voter turnout record this year. I even exchanged some witty Twitter banter with the SFUO last weekend. I'm told by my good friend Nick Taylor-Vaisey (U of O Elections Bureau Presents radio host) that anyone interested should tune into the show tomorrow afternoon at 2:30 p.m. EST (3:30 for you folks in the Maritimes).

You can listen online at: http://www.chuo.fm/en/home

Cheers!
Danielle