The number of voters casting ballots is on the decline, whether it be at the federal, municipal or provincial levels.
Mario Levesque is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Mount Allison. He says the decline is a direct result of the lack of leadership.
“People don’t like the fact that politicians don’t kept their word. They lie to us, and they change their minds and their platform immediately after being elected, and they make decisions that are better for their friends or political party and not the people,” Levesque says.
Levesque points out the argument that is being made to lower the voting age.
He says that won’t work. “At the federal level, we lowered voting age from 21 to 18 years of age. Yet, since that time, since 1972, all of the federal elections, and the turnout has gone down. That is except for the 2015 with the Trudeau election and it went up, just a little tick.”
Levesque doesn’t expect we’ll see an increase in votes for the upcoming provincial election on September 24th either.
