A local charity that advocates for and provides support to hundreds of non-profits in the London, Ont., area plans to use its networking skills to boost voter engagement in the city’s upcoming municipal election.
Pillar Nonprofit Network hopes to improve voter numbers through a new initiative set to launch this week called Project 51 London, named after the project’s long-term goal of increasing voter turnout in London’s future municipal elections to more than 50 per cent.
London’s 2014 and 2018 municipal elections drew a voting turnout of 43 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively.
On a provincial scale, the 2022 Ontario election recorded its lowest voter turnout ever this year with only 43 per cent of those eligible having cast a vote.
The 2022 municipal election cycle has also seen a lower turnout in the number of candidates running for a spot on city council.
Pillar’s membership engagement manager Paul Seale, the lead for Project 51 London, says the initiative will target people who rarely or never vote.
“There’s some evidence that the leading indicator of whether you vote or not in any level of election is chiefly determined by whether or not your family votes, whether or not your parents took you to the polls and kind of normalized voting,” Seale said.
“What we’re trying to do is disrupt the history of who has always voted and who has never voted, and give people another opportunity to start a voting habit for themselves and their children.”
The main tool of Project 51 London will be pop-up events focused on “all things voter engagement,” the first of which Pillar will host on Wednesday morning.
Wednesday’s event will feature a voter station simulation, discussions with The Urban League of London on the group’s upcoming all-candidates meetings and a presentation from Thriving London which will focus on the organizations’ surveys for local candidates.
The pop-up event will takes many cues from the SDG Cities’ Municipal Election Toolkit, which is designed with supporting local organizations that look to boost voter engagement in their communities.
“You can’t tell people that (voting) is easy if they don’t think it’s easy, but you can show people and you can make it more interesting than this sort of ‘rights and responsibilities’ thing … that’s not very motivating, so the pop-ups themselves help to connect the act of voting to the things that people actually care about,” Seale said.
Seale hopes Wednesday’s event will also encourage community organizations to host their own pop-up events and spread the word of Project 51 London even further.
Organizations would be coached by one of 30 volunteers who specialize in hosting voter engagement pop-up events.
As for Wednesday’s event, which Seale hopes will be the first of many, it’s scheduled to run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Innovation Works London’s location at 201 King St.
London’s municipal election will take place on Oct. 24.
Post a Comment