How Would Soldiers Who Died For Our Freedom Feel About Pathetic Turnout Of Voters In Our Elections?

By Doug Draper

In the former battle grounds Europe and others regions of the world, there are row after row of white markers above the graves of young Canadians and Americans who never got the chance to come home.

Graves of fallen Second World War soldiers in Normandy, France.

These young people, we are reminded every November 11 on Veterans and Remembrance Day, sacrificed their lives so the rest of us could live our lives in relative freedom – in democracies where we could express our views without death squads, and where we can actively engage in elections and vote.

Today, we have Americans and Canadians in the line of fire Afghanistan where the people living in that hapless country risk being beaten or killed, just for trying get an education or in some other way better their lives. At least 14 Afghan voters were killed in this past summer’s parliamentary elections.

And yet here we are in Canada and the United States, where we set aside occasions like Canada Day and the Fourth of July for parading our pride in country in front of the world, and less than half of us could be bothered to go out and vote this fall in important municipal elections in Ontario and midterm elections in the U.S. What a tribute that is to those who fought and died (and still are in) for our way of life!

The turnout of eligible voters for the Erie and Niagara County, New York area for this past November 2 midterm elections was about 45 per cent, and some pundits suggested that was a fairly strong turnout compared to elections in the recent past. Think about it. Less than half the people with a right to vote bothered to exercise that right during midterm elections that had the potential to decide the fate of the progressive policies of country’s president, Barack Obama, when it comes to health care, education, renewable energy and energy independence, and host of other issues for the next two years.

On the Niagara, Ontario side of the border, residents in the region’s 12 local municipalities faced choices at the local and regional level during this October’s municipal elections at a time when this region faces one of the highest jobless rates in the country, among the lowest average income rates, and a host of important challenges and opportunities those we have chosen to elect to our councils have to address. But that didn’t keep at least six out of ever 10 eligible voters across the region from not caring enough to go to the polls.

In St. Catharine – the largest municipality in the region – the turnout was a pathetic 30 per cent. Some suggest the lack of a close mayor’s race was the reason, but this municipality also had a large field of local city and regional candidates running that, given their diverse positions on issues, could make a huge difference on key issues like the soaring costs of policing and water and wastewater rates, on any hope for building a regional transit system, and so much more. In the neighbouring municipality of Thorold, where there was an important mayor’s race, barely more than 38 per cent of those eligible bothered voting in an election that ultimately left a three-vote gap between the winner and his nearest contender. Someone told me they talked to some of their acquaintances in Thorold who mentioned that they were planning to go out and vote but were “too tired.”

Too tired? The soldiers fighting their way up the beaches of Normandy, France in June of 1944 couldn’t afford to be too tired, nor could the pilots battling off Nazi air forces over the skies of Britain. Our young soldiers negotiating roadside bombs in Afghanistan can’t afford to be too tired either.

If we could ask the tens-of-thousands of our fallen veterans from wars going back as far as Vietnam, Korea and the Second World War what they would do if they could get up out of their underground beds, I’ll bet one of the things they would do is vote!

As for the six out of 10 or more of us who were either to tired or, for some other reason, couldn’t be bothered voting in the recent October 25 and November 2 elections across our Ontario/New York border, maybe they should go and spend some time living in Iran or some other nation where the people have to fight for their lives for the right to vote.

Then come back and tell us how tired or how much you can’t be bothered voting here.

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