Organisations rally to get young people voting

BY LUCAS BAIRD

Last week volunteers from OakTree, YVote and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition gathered at local universities to encourage young people to vote.

The event which took place at UNSW, Sydney University and UTS is part of a wider push by these organisations to make sure that as many people between the age bracket of 18 and 25 are registered to vote before the federal election in July.

Outreach Coordinator for Oaktree, Tamara Swinfield said that getting young people to vote was important because they could decide the election.

“We are a really big constituency, we have the matters behind us and we also have an energy that we can tap into,” she told City Hub.

“Young people are passionate, we just have to tap into that and find out what issues young people are passionate about.”

“Think about the same-sex marriage debate, a lot of that is driven by young people.”

The Labor party is also running a campaign to encourage youth enrolment. Where their MPs post pictures of themselves the year that they first voted.

But Ms Swinfield said that this campaign might not be as effective because of people’s distrust and disillusionment of politicians

“I think a lot of the time people are disillusioned by our MPs, so it might not have the desired effect.”

“I’m sure it would have an effect on somebody though.”

Ms Swinfield said that it was more up to people talking to each other and encouraging others to use their voice.

In the last federal election, approximately 400,000 or 25 per cent between the ages of 18 and 25 did not register to vote in time.

The AEC told City Hub that only 17.4 per cent of cohort in this age group is not registered to vote as of Monday.

“Encouraging youth enrollment is important as this cohort are traditionally underrepresented on the electoral roll compared to the rest of the eligible population,” they said.

The AEC also said that they would be running a comprehensive last minute campaign to encourage young potential voters to enroll.