Have You Voted Yet?

Cross post from http://www.davebagler.ca

The Young Greens elections are on now and each Green Party of Canada member under the age of 30 was sent an email with a BallotBin.com URL and voting instructions. Voting closes this Sunday at midnight.

The Young Greens Council is responsible for reaching out to what many would argue is the Green Party's most important demographic so please make sure you have your say. You can find the candidate profiles online at http://youth.greenparty.ca/en/2010candidates.

If you are interested in being involved with the Young Greens there are many appointed positions that the newly elected YGC willing be filling in the coming weeks.

Sorry to be a broken record but if you are under 30 and you are a member of the Green Party of Canada you NEED to vote. If you are having trouble voting, or you did not receive an email with your voting URL and instructions please email youth@greenparty.ca.

Nowhere to be Seen

So you're a student. You graduate in April. You're drowning in student debt and unemployment in your age group is at a 30 year high. You're healthy if you don't count that you breath smog all day and everything you consume from laundry detergent to lunch is full of chemicals. You live on ramen noodles and no-name Kraft dinner to stay within your budget while our government racks up a record deficit.

You may become frustrated. You may ask yourself, why do we talk more about pensions than education? Why are they saying the recession is over when people my age can't find work? Why does our health-care debate revolve around drug benefits and end of life care and not prevention and healthy living? And why is my government so eager to mortgage my future for the comforts of today?

The answer to these questions is that you don't vote. Or if you do, your friends don't or at least not enough of them. When our politicians pander to demographics they pander to the demographics who will help them win. That's not us.

In the last election only about 37% of eligible voters under 25 bothered to show up at the polls. Compare that to your grandparents at 68%, or your parents at 60%.

They vote, so they impact election results. Politicians pay attention to them. For the most part we get ignored and it's our fault. We need to either start voting or start getting used to short end of the stick.