It's more than apathy turning voters away

It's election time. There's lack of interest, nobody on the ballot, electronic voting, catering to special interests, mass bribery, gimmicks, slimy moves, attack advertising, selling out. I'm not talking about the U.S. federal election, this is our student union election, right here, right now. What went wrong?

Despite record turnout, there is still little interest in the ongoing FSU elections among the student populace. In fact, I witnessed outright resistance to the symbolic act of voting among many students.

While working at the polling stations I heard the words ‘I'd rather not vote' quite a lot. And the majority of students openly said they voted for the candidate who bribed them most. Without even reading candidate profiles, they readily voted for whoever fed them processed meat-tubes, candies and baked goods. I heard about ‘Big Mike's free BBQ' from tons of people who sold their vote to him for a greasy tube of leftover animal parts.

Other popular reasons to vote among students were ‘because someone told me to' and ‘I think I know that guy/girl.' Very few people knew anything at all about the candidates, even me, and I was working at the election table!

With such little value or attention placed on the elections by students, it's no wonder that three VP's ran unopposed, leaving students with a YES or NO vote. For three of our representatives we basically got to choose between letting the only person who even considered the position represent us, or have no representative at all. What a novel idea; no representation, but self-representation!

But as the likely ‘YES' vote for all three VPs shows, it's pretty clear that people want to be represented by elected officials. We want to be governed, but not so much we don't want to be annoyed by having to vote for them. The FSU did a great job ensuring as that the info was out there, and that the process was simple and convenient for students. There were ample opportunities at booths on campus and on the FanshaweOnline website, yet many people ‘didn't have time' to take a minute out of their day to vote.

Can it really be written off as apathy? Or is there something fundamentally wrong with the system that drives people away? Is low voter participation just the symptom of a decaying form of hierarchical government? Is there a better way we can govern ourselves?

Or are we meant to keep clicking our votes on laptops leaving no paper-trail? I'm sure FanshaweOnline isn't as bad as Dyncorp for Ohio-style ‘irregularities,' but it's still all online, and thus easily hackable. Not that I believe there is too much incentive to fix the votes here. But just like the big leagues, there's no physical ballots available for things like recounts.

In any case it's politics as usual. The candidates make all kinds of promises they have no intention of keeping, buy as many votes as possible back from their constituents, and a small tussle between hopefuls ensues over who will be the next to suck at the teat of power.

Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.