In the first circular local elections The youngest voting rights came to the urns least numerous. In a group of voters under 30, attendance was below 40%. Szmo Kasprzak in a text published in Political Critics points to discouragement caused by even anti-democratic rules prevailing in Polish schools and deficiency of representation on electoral lists. However, tiny participation in democracy at local level has its origin primarily in the archaic principles of participation in the vote and unencouraged electoral campaign, 2 aspects which are completely incompatible with the realities of the life of today's twenty-somethings.
Polish school can discourage civic activity. If we do not find ourselves in our own way especially active and going beyond the barriers of the teacher system, we will frequently have a negative image of self-government, participation or activism. However, this was besides actual erstwhile parents and grandparents of today's teenagers attended schools. Grandparents and grandmothers besides have experience of surviving in an undemocratic system. Nevertheless, they voted much more. Young people don't trust politicians?
Yes, but it is not unique in Polish society either. Politicians regularly fall the worst in all rankings of assurance in the professions carried out in typical trials. Low social assurance besides applies to state institutions and fellow citizens, as shown by even Sadura and Sierakowski in Population. Elders have learned this way of working longer than younger ones. And they passed it on.
At the same time, representatives of the generation They have broad cognition of politics, and many of them besides have strong convictions that they are not afraid to demonstrate, as in the case of black protests. The October elections brought queues to the polling stations. However, this did not happen again in the local elections.
Has youth demonstrated discontent with the fresh government? Are they tired of politics? October mobilization was a one-time deviation from normal? These are questions that bothered publicists and commentators after the turnout. However, I believe that the specificity of these choices, which is not adapted to the realities of the lives of the youngest generation of voters, has been decided. In short, the reasons for the deficiency of participation of twenty-year-olds were far more mundane than the ideological opposition attributed to them by commentators. In the current form, local government voting is hard for young adults to scope and pointless – both at the registration phase and at the voting stage.
I want to vote, but how?
For any another election, the voting place may be chosen by the voter at any time by a fewer clicks. Prior to the parliamentary elections, information on this subject was widely distributed through online social campaigns. It was completely different in the case of local elections – you had to look for them on your own – if it was assumed at all that it was possible to vote outside of the check-in place.
But say individual found this information in time, which is more than 9 days before the election. The Office should have 5 working days to examine the application, and due to the pre-election Easter Monday was free of work. There were stairs again, due to the fact that in order to show that we actually live where we declare we should present a document, e.g. a rental agreement or an electrical bill. And after all, so many people rent an flat in a fewer people or stay with friends. Moves are besides more frequent, which involves further formalities that are easy to forget. Problems pile up.
So if individual insists on voting, it is essential for many to return to the check-in place. Again, this excludes a group that works on weekends or for another reasons cannot afford to leave at that time. Especially since many of them returned little than a week earlier from their household home, who visited for Christmas. It was not the discouragement of politics that made them not vote.
I want to vote, but who?
Those who happily registered, went to their household home or live in a residence can theoretically vote. But how do you choose a good candidate? With the locality of origin, young voters who went to larger cities to survey or work may no longer have close relationships. So they may be forced to usage household tips or shoot blindly. The fresh place of residence may not yet be connected.
Even for those young voters who vote in a place they know well, the choice of a candidate to support in local elections is difficult. To talk consciously, they may effort to do research, but in local elections it is not the regulation that candidates programs are available online. Especially erstwhile it comes to people outside Warsaw, which, of course, is the loudest in all media. And yet it is the net that is the most natural (and actually the only) form of acquiring information for the Z generation. Twenty-year-olds don't watch TV, they don't read the paper press anymore. Local newspapers or flyers scope older voters, and candidates are frequently their peers they know personally. The younger are excluded again. No wonder they don't see the point in the vote.
Elections Not for Young
Given the mounting obstacles, it is simply a success that nearly 40% of young adults voted for self-government. In elections that were not a very loud subject on the net – to the point that many basic information had to be actively and in advance sought. In elections that make the impression that they are not for 20-year-olds, which are inactive frequently suspended between birth and upbringing and where they survey or work. In elections that take place shortly after previous, very loud and engaging for the full society.
Local government voting in the current expression does not include access for the youngest voters. The formalities to be fulfilled to vote at all cannot always be fulfilled. The offer shall not be addressed to them either due to the form of the transmission or due to its content. Distrust of the institution or manifesting discontent is possible if there is any real choice between informed vote and abstaining from it.
Make it easier, not harder
Local elections are by their nature easier for people profoundly associated with their local communities. This, however, will inevitably become rarer. Integration and social ties through the improvement of technology are possible regardless of distance, and the work and individual life of young people will increasingly require mobility. I think it is essential to facilitate electoral registration in fresh places, via the net and without additional formalities. An information run is besides needed so that anyone who wants to have the chance to take advantage of this opportunity.
Furthermore, like Szmo Kasprzak, I believe that more young people request to be active in the elections, not only for the representation of their generation, but besides as those who can postpone the solutions that local communities can propose for electronic communication. This is hard to anticipate from councillors elected continuously since 1846, campaigning to hand out flyers at the local marketplace in the mediate of a working week.
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Karolina Wiśniowska – postgraduate of law and doctrine as part of Interdepartmental Individual Humanities Studies at the Jagiellonian University. Author of technological and public texts on bioethics, social doctrine and doctrine of law, published in the American diary of Bioethics, diary of Law and the Biosciences, diary of Neurophilosophy, and Analisia and Existence.
