I have written extensively about the importance of voting. Check it out here, and here and here.

I don’t care where you live, voting is your voice, your opportunity to be involved and your message to those charged with the honour of representing you that demand respect as a constituent.

In most nations, voter turnout languishes around 65 per cent, with citizens giving a myriad of reasons as to why they choose not to show up at the polls, none of which I buy. Thus, when people tell me they don’t vote and list one of these reasons (my vote doesn’t mean anything, all politicians are corrupt, it takes too much time, I don’t follow politics) I tell them to decline their ballot. In fact, I raised this issue almost three years ago after acting as a poll clerk in a provincial election.

The training manual instructed poll clerks about the option of declining one’s ballot. Check out my post here. In essence, Ontario citizens can return the ballot to the poll clerk without having done anything to it, which does not count as a spoiled ballot. Instead, it is marked as a declined ballot. The reason for a voter’s decision to do this is not required, however, so the act of declining a ballot in itself is not a political statement.

But a new movement has formed in anticipation of tomorrow’s election in Ontario. It is called Decline Your Vote and urges people to do just that as a reflection of their dissatisfaction with the candidates.

Perhaps if enough people decide to show up at the polls tomorrow and exercise this option, the aggregate will convince politicians that people do care, that they do want to be involved and that they value their precious democratic right and responsibility to vote.

Or perhaps this movement will spur the creation of a new political party. After all, political parties are just that: an aggregate of people with similar interests who want to promulgate them.