VOTE DIVERSITY PRESENTS:
MY VOTE SPEAKS VOLUMES
The Problem
The issue identified
by Vote Diversity was the low turnout at general elections by youth and
migrants. New Zealand citizens and permanent residents aged 18 and above have
full voting rights. The exercise of this
right by both young and old alike is crucial to the effective functioning of
democracy. However, according to the
2013 Census data, only 69.44 per cent of eligible 18-24 year olds are enrolled
to vote. Studies have found that recent
immigrants to New Zealand are far less likely to be enrolled to vote than
members of the total population.
Consequently, young migrant participation in elections is of concern.
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| IDEA DEVELOPMENT: BRAINSTORMING AND MEETINGS |
The Solution
While there were
examples of efforts to increase the rates of Māori youth participation in
voting, there was little evidence of any targeted attempts to engage youth from
other ethnic minorities Hence, the aim of the project was to raise awareness of
the importance of voting among ethnic-minority youth with the overall goal of
increasing the number of voting ethnic-minority youth in New Zealand.
As a primary outcome,
our team produced a series of images and videos featuring young, ethnically
diverse New Zealanders explaining in their mother tongue why they would be
voting in the upcoming September Elections.
Their messages were translated into English for the purpose of
subtitles. These images and videos were
displayed on our group’s Facebook page.
See Figures 1 and 2 for examples of these posters.
The immediately
observable secondary outcome was the engagement by video and photograph
participants with ideas about the election.
Each participant had to think of a reason why they would be casting a
vote. For many, this was a difficult
exercise. Even more challenging for some
was the need to articulate this in their mother-tongue.
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| INSIGHT TO OUR DESIGN PROCESS |
The Impact
The importance of participating
in a general election cannot be overstated.
We consider every Facebook ‘reach’, ‘like’ or interaction of any other
kind to help us in our mission to encourage ethnic youth participation. We reached 187 likes on our Facebook page and
our maximum reach was over 3500. It was really beneficial paying for Facebook
promotion as organically we would only have reached about 500 people. In hindsight, it would have been better to
start our page earlier to get more exposure and more people talking about it.
Additionally, we could have been more generous with our Facebook spending.
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| PART OF OUR FILMING PROCESS |
Importantly, our volunteer
participants were all provoked to think about personal reasons as to why they
would be voting. It sparked conversations about the topic that extended into
the families of the participants. This
was because many of the participants were not confident that they were clearly
expressing themselves in their mother tongue.
As a result, nearly every volunteer made calls to older family members,
asking for help to translate sentences.
This was not something that we had anticipated and at first, this was of
slight concern. However, it turned out
to be a significant organic way of spreading our message beyond our initial target
group. As a result of requiring
participants to use their mother tongue, the conversation
about why people should vote was extended to include many family members, of
all generations.
