Saskatoon students encouraging people to vote in federal election

Elijah Ren and his classmates are too young to vote, but that's not stopping them from having an impact on this year's federal election.

Ren is in the Grade 8 Let's Lead – Nīkānētān program at Westmount Community School in Saskatoon. It's designed to build leadership and teamwork skills by getting students out into the community.

Maybe young people think it's a waste of their time to follow politics or just go vote. But they should care. It's their future and it's my future.- Grade 8 student, Rowyn Caswell.

One of their assignments is to make an impact on the federal election. How students go about completing their task is entirely up to them.

"My group's plan is to get more people to vote," explained Ren. "We went out and asked people if they were planning to vote. If they said no, we would try and convince them to vote."

Ren said his group would explain the different party platforms to those not planning to vote. If people changed their mind, Ren had them sign a piece of paper pledging to vote on Oct. 19.  

Rowyn Caswell is in Ren's group. She was surprised to learn how few young people actually take the time to vote.

"Maybe young people think it's a waste of their time to follow politics or just go vote," Caswell said. "But they should care. It's their future and it's my future."

Snowball effect

Chris Clark is in charge of these democracy-loving students. He has been teaching the program for the past nine years and was thrilled a federal election campaign was taking place this fall.

"All I did was give them the goal of go make an impact and then do a little bit of making them realize why they should," Clark said. "It becomes like a big snowball. It starts rolling downhill and it needs less and less of me and they're getting motivated."

Armed with a new love of Canadian politics, Clark said his students have focused their efforts on impacting the voting base.

"Some of them target specific parties and specific platforms and say, 'I want to support that.' But most of them end up focusing on, 'We want more people to vote.' Particularly, people that haven't been voting."

Going to extreme lengths

One student who showed dogged determination in pursuit of a non-voter was Cameron Merkowsky.

He was in the Midtown Plaza and needed one more signature from a person who would commit to voting for the first time this year. Merkowsky met a person who listened to his pitch but ultimately said they would not vote.

That's when Merkowsky got serious. 

He followed the person into Victoria's Secret, which proved to be an eye-opening experience.

"It was great," Merkowsky said, laughing. "I learned a lot of new things, but I got that person's signature! I needed to get one more signature and I wanted to fill a whole page, and I've never been in there before. So I needed to try a new thing."

Merkowsky and his classmates will be out in the community on Oct. 16 for one final voting push. It will be hard to escape them because, as Cameron Merkowsky proved, they will go to any lengths to convince someone to vote.