"The minority government meant it was difficult for Elections Canada to provide campus administrators with a clear timeline to secure the space required and help us recruit the election workers needed to deliver the program. 3:38Įlections Canada says the decision to cancel the Vote on Campus program for the coming Sept. 20 federal election was initially made back in the fall of 2020 because of two main challenges: the COVID-19 pandemic and the electoral uncertainty created by a minority government. WATCH | Power & Politics: Lack of on-campus voting causing concern for youth voter turnout:ĭuration 3:38 Executive director of Apathy is Boring, Samantha Reusch, talks to Power & Politics about how the lack of on-campus polling stations can impact youth voter turnout this election. "That can cause confusion about where they should or can vote when a federal election comes around," said Samantha Reusch, executive director of the youth civic engagement group Apathy is Boring, in an interview with CBC's Power & Politics. It was designed to limit barriers to voting for the youngest eligible cohort, who are often living away from home or frequently changing addresses.
Everyone has a story to scrap update#
The program offered students away at university or college the opportunity to cast a special ballot for their home riding, or to update their address information so they could vote in the riding where their campus was located. On its website, Elections Canada says the initiative was "very well received and allowed more than 110,000 electors, mostly students, to vote on their campus." That was up from about 70,000 in 2015. Vote on Campus was then expanded for the 2019 election, with 119 temporary voting locations set up at 98 post-secondary institutions nationwide.
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Similarly, among 18-year-old voters eligible to cast a ballot for the first time, turnout increased 17.7 points to 58.3 per cent from 40.5 per cent in 2011. 2015 federal election saw youth vote in unprecedented numbers.
According to Elections Canada data, it was the biggest jump in turnout among this age group since the agency began making demographic estimates in 2004. The 2015 federal election then saw an unprecedented 18.3-point increase in turnout among eligible 18 to 24 year olds, with 57.1 per cent casting a ballot compared to 38.8 per cent in 2011. At that point, political engagement and turnout among young adults in Canada had, with some fluctuations, been declining since the 1970s, according to a report from the Library of Parliament. "We've seen decades of research that states that when you engage people in democracy when they are young, you have the opportunity to create this entire generation of lifetime voters," she continued.Įlections Canada introduced Vote on Campus as a pilot program on 39 campuses during the 2015 federal election. "We see this cancellation as damaging to our democracy," said Camellia Wong, communications director for the Toronto-based Future Majority, an organization that advocates on behalf of millennial and Gen-Z voters. The decision by Elections Canada to scrap its successful Vote on Campus program this year is a setback for the democratic process, a political engagement group says, but pressing issues could still compel the youngest cohort of Canadian voters to cast a ballot.
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