First, I'll go to the big theme. The big theme is a pretty simple one, and it runs across our Senate reform, our election finance reform, and bills like this, and that is strengthening democracy. We want to see our democracy strengthened. Reversing voter turnout declines is part of that.
I believe it will increase voter turnout. If you ask me, will it reverse the decline in voter turnout, my answer would be a little bit different, in the sense that while there will be an initial bump, this goes again to work like my personal favourite, which is Putnam's work on declining community involvement, which shows that there has been in the post-war era, particularly since about 1950, a decline in community involvement of every type. That includes membership in political parties, participation in political parties, voting, and attending political events, as one of those groups, but it also includes involvement in civic organizations, running hockey leagues, and so on. It has been a consistent trend.
But the other thing Putnam identifies, and you can find it in some of this other work, is that this decline has not been one where somebody who used to be involved isn't anymore; it's a decline in successive age cohorts. If you were voting, if you were involved in Kinsmen when you were in your twenties and you're now in your sixties, you're probably still voting and you're probably still involved.
You can see that here in the Pammett and LeDuc study of 2003, where they look at voting and not voting in 2000 by age cohort.
Of those who were over 68—