Photo by Jason Morris @JPols
Students from UNBC POLS 320 class presented the results of their class project at Monday's city council meeting. POLS 320 is a political science class at UNBC which focuses on teaching students how to conduct university level research in an applied fashion. Over the years the class has done various projects, this year they focused on voter apathy amongst youth 18-35. They concluded that youth are voting and are "politically engaged."
The results showed that over 80% of respondents participated in the most recent federal election. It also showed that most youth are not in favour of lowering the voting age but looking to more digital ways of voting for the future. This spurred city councillors to talk about the possible return of the debate of electronic voting
However the results do show a bit of a bias according to the students that presented stating that most of the surveys came from UNBC and not enough came from the community. Garth Frizzell was impressed by the students and happy to see students are engaged in the political process, he asked if their was ways to improve those numbers even more. One of the students stated that more engagement with young people will continue to encourage those numbers to improve.
By Grant Bachand @grantbachand