Editor: On May 2, I will become another 20-something who doesn鈥檛 vote.

There are a lot of theories as to why young people don鈥檛 vote; the most common being that we don鈥檛 care. This is the theory thought up by middle-aged and senior voters. The majority wouldn鈥檛 try find out the real reason.

Instead, they prefer to see the stats after the fact. While some youth may not care, the majority of youth I know see flaws in a system the older generation has been conditioned to believe in.

In the Grade 11 curriculum, Parliament is described as the place where MPs gather to represent their riding鈥檚 views on policy.  The youth then head out to the real world, and see the paradox. No matter which party you vote for, you are voting for a party, not a representative.

In the ideal world, candidates present ways they would try to bring their riding鈥檚 voice to government.  In the real, special interest-driven world, groups of like-minded individuals form a business called a 鈥減arty.鈥� These parties then present their product, their policy views, to voters in an election, and force them to settle for 鈥済ood-enough.鈥�

We鈥檙e supposed to elect MPs to represent our interests in Parliament. What we have is a system where MPs represent their party鈥檚 interests, and then defend said party from us. In Canada, our system of government actually works opposite to how it was designed,

Youth don鈥檛 vote because we have a fresher memory of the way things should work, and we refuse to support a system that doesn鈥檛 work by participating in it.

Jordan Braun,

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