Affecting Disaffected Voters

If parties asked proper questions, offered solutions, and kept their promises, voters might begin to like what they see and believe their vote matters.

The 2008 Canadian federal election saw the lowest voter turnout in over 100 years. It would seem that political parties have become irrelevant in the eyes of more than 40 per cent of the country’s population.

If history is any indicator, half of that 40 per cent may never vote. However, the other half, approximately five million people, might be persuaded to do so if they a) like what they see, and b) believe their vote will make a difference.

Since five million disaffected voters is just about the same number of people who placed the present government in power, politicians and statisticians would do well to pay attention to this huge constituency. If political parties were to ask the proper questions, offer solutions, and, most importantly, keep their promises, voters might begin to both like what they see and believe their vote will make a difference.

What I mean by "proper" is to ask open-ended questions. Too often politicians only want to give responses to predefined issues – their issues. How many times have you seen a politician's questionnaire on political priorities, only to cross them out and write in "none of the above"?

Personally, I suspect there exists a huge constituency of fiscal conservatives and social libertarians who currently have no representation in Ottawa. These are people who resent being stuck with the tab of spendthrift governments. These are people who don't care who anybody is screwing or what they are smoking. They just want to go about their business unimpeded by government. They want their leaders to behave the way they do: by watching what they spend and not spending what they don't have.

The closest thing to fiscal conservatism Canadians have been offered turned out to be a team of the biggest spenders in decades who continue with business as usual, legislate their ideas of morality, and support the U.S.-led war on drugs, which is a massive social and economic failure. Surely we can do better.