This Is Why Young People Don't Vote!

Above is a Youtube Video made for Tunbridge Wells Borough Council to encourage young people to vote and get involved with politics. Please take it from a young person... No. This will NOT encourage any young person with even a single brain cell to vote and will certainly not encourage many to get actively involved with politics. It tells you nothing over the irritating, cringe worthy "noise", that I am guessing is ment to be music(?).

The whole thing is an absolute joke. After watching it, I genuinely feel patronised. Do you think patronising young people is the way to get them to vote? COME ON PEOPLE! THINK!

So how do you get young people to take an interest in politics and voting? Well first you do not make tax payer funded, patronising, irritating, uninformative videos like the above mentioned. After you have mastered the art of not wasting tax payer's money, the question becomes more tricky. There is no easy, step by step, fool proof way of getting anyone, let alone young people, to vote. However, as always, I have a few off the wall ideas.

You cannot expect an 18 year old who has never heard a thing about the political parties to all of a sudden be told to vote and actually do it. Things have to start years before their 18th Birthday. Currently in secondary school you learn about the electoral system and how it was formed. Pretty good if you are already interested in Politics or History. But what about all those people who just want to vote for the right person. They don't want to be an MP, they don't want to be Prime Minister, they don't want to be Supreme Overlord of the World, they don't want to be involved. All they want to do is get an education, a decent job, a family and every few years vote for someone they understand and can believe in. What about these people? This is the bulk of people, which is sometimes hard to remember for someone actively involved with Politics. Reality Check: "Most people don't give a dam about the ins and outs of the Political World".

So, what about these people? Things need to start young, and they need to start local. Get local Councillors and the local MP into Primary Schools to do talks on what they actually do, and get them involved with non political activites with the pupils and school aswell. In the same way the Fire and Police Service builds up relationships with schools, Politics needs to also.

So now the young person has gone through Primary School understanding the basic roles of their local Council and knowing the name of their MP. They now move on to Secondary School. Mock Elections. I will say that one more time to get my message across. Mock Elections. These are the most fantastic things to get pupils, from 12 years to 16 years old, actively involved with debate, party politics and voting. Mock Elections are held at the same time as General Elections, Council Elections and European Elections. Invite into school representatives, or the candidates themselves, to do a hustings type school assembly. Each "candidate" does a quick speech on why the pupils should vote for them and their party. After the speeches, the floor is open for pupils to ask the parties questions directly. After all that, the pupils leave and vote for whichever party or candidate they want in the same way real elections are held.

They then leave Secondary School, maybe to go straight into work or to carry on in education. Either way, they should now understand politics, voting and the importance of politics in everyone's lives.

"Practical Politics" rather than "Textbook Politics". Believe it or not, the majority of young people want to meet the faces behind the names, shake hands, and ask (alot) of questions. It is just a shame the same people politicians are trying to win votes off of, are the same people they just aren't listening to.

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