https://results.elections.on.ca/en/graphics-charts has a chart at the bottom for “Historical Voter Turnout”. It goes back to 1866. What I see in this is that giving up so hard on our democracy that you don’t engage with it in the simplest way is a pretty recent thing:
1929 set a new all-time low of 57% that didn’t get beat until we hit 52% in 2007. And we’ve been lowering the bar since then:
2011, the next election hit a new low of 48%.
2014 at 51% wasn’t much better, in 2018 we at least got 57% to tie the record low that held since 1929.
And last time in 2022 it was 44% and we talked about it a lot. Because that was depressing af. I really hope enough of them heard so we never lower the bar beyond that. And hopefully we can start getting it above 57% on the regular like we managed to do for 78 years.
https://results.elections.on.ca/en/graphics-charts has a chart at the bottom for “Historical Voter Turnout”. It goes back to 1866. What I see in this is that giving up so hard on our democracy that you don’t engage with it in the simplest way is a pretty recent thing:
1929 set a new all-time low of 57% that didn’t get beat until we hit 52% in 2007. And we’ve been lowering the bar since then:
2011, the next election hit a new low of 48%.
2014 at 51% wasn’t much better, in 2018 we at least got 57% to tie the record low that held since 1929.
And last time in 2022 it was 44% and we talked about it a lot. Because that was depressing af. I really hope enough of them heard so we never lower the bar beyond that. And hopefully we can start getting it above 57% on the regular like we managed to do for 78 years.
It’s sad that people don’t vote, even if they think it’s a done deal.
Especially because it sends money to the party you vote for, which the OPC has upheld: https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1005286/all-parties-in-ontario-legislature-support-extending-per-vote-subsidy
All the more impactful because we have limits on campaign finance so rich people have to try a teensy bit harder to influence the process.