Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. We see a lot of students in university who are not interested, but being political science professors, we see the more interested ones. It's hard to say exactly what would engage others, but the main thing is that young people in particular need to be shown that the i

Procedure and House Affairs committee  This question about whether voter mobilization or voter encouragement is necessarily in any contradiction to the providing of basic information about how to vote, if I'm interpreting that correctly—that question was mentioned by a couple of other people too—I think I've already s

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's right.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. As I mentioned to your colleague—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —I would fully support the transference of that kind of information. Once again, I don't see that it's necessarily in contradiction to urging people to take advantage of these opportunities.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think I just did that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't want to get into the discussion that we would have if we were having a seminar in political science, where we debate the use of interest as an explanatory variable. In many ways, it simply pushes the explanatory question back one step—saying that if you don't do things be

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Oh, if you're asking me, I'm certainly not disagreeing in any way with the benefits of bringing that information forward. I don't think that necessarily means you can't combine that with encouragement to take advantage of these opportunities.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think the remarks by my two colleagues illustrate the difficulty of commenting on this bill. We have very general or broader comments about the nature of the bill itself and then we have a lot of specific items, and I presume there are many other specific items that haven't bee

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. My name is Jon Pammett. I'm a professor of political science at Carleton. I retired this last year after teaching for 40-some years. I know I don't look it, but there we are.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, moving to a single election day on a weekend, either a Saturday or Sunday, would be an option. I think the studies worldwide, as I mentioned before, show that countries that do hold their elections on a weekend have higher turnouts. They're not all that much higher, but the

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I agree with the premise to that question. I started off by saying that people who vote at advance polls were determined to vote, and part of this determination involves finding out where the few advance polls really are. I mean, it's not entirely obvious where they would

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not quite sure what subject I'm being asked to address here. Regarding your comments on the list, young voters can get on the list by registering at the polls on election day. The problem there is that it's an extra deterrent. No card comes in the mail if you're not already

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I take the point about the churches as polling places, but you have more access to schools, or better access to schools, on Sunday, and maybe that would be a trade-off that could operate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mandatory voting would certainly solve the problem. Of course, generally, public opinion doesn't favour it, so I think it's a lost cause to be promoting it in our case. Australia votes on Saturdays, and of course when they have the mandatory voting it's difficult to disentangle