Rick Edwards, he of T4 presenting fame has loaned his powerful beard-and-big arms combination to the cause of encouraging young people to vote. Speaking eloquently and simply, his speech in this TED Talk marks a refreshing counterpoint to Russell Brand’s anarchic ‘burn them all’ sentimentwhen it comes to politics and politicians.
After explaining how few young people vote, he then explains the power of the youth vote and how they could hold the key to who wins the next election; so long as they register to vote and actually vote.
‘Young people not voting is not due to them being uncaring or apathetic or lazy as the media or certain MPs would have you believe,’ he told the audience at TEDxHousesofParliament. ‘On the contrary, in my experience, they do care, they’re passionate about social action. They’re volunteering in greater numbers than ever before, they campaign online. They’ve just lost faith or never had faith in the top-down political process.’
You can watch the video here:
But if you haven’t got time, check out his proposed solutions to boost the youth vote:
Solution 1: Voting should be online
Solution 2: Compulsory voting for first-time voters
‘Now we would need to have a conscientious opt-out for the Russell Brands among us, but I would ensure that the opt-out process was much more of a ball-ache than voting itself.’
Solution 3: A ‘none of the above’ vote He suggests an ‘empty parliament’ and shows that that would be ‘the ultimate expression of dissatisfaction from the electorate’, and then the parties would be ‘scrambling for your votes… and surely that is no bad thing’.
Solution 4: Voter advice applications, which are apps where you answer questions to work out which party you have the most in common with. Not only will this make it really easy for people to work out who they should vote for – people use it in European countries – but it means that politicians need to stick to their ‘concrete’.
Solution 5: More young people in politics, to bridge ‘that gap between young people and Westminster’.
He also calls on any politicans watching to make sure that, if they care for young people, they try to help make these changes happen.
Check out the video, it’s not exactly as verbally acrobatic as Russell Brand’s various tirades against voting, but hopefully it’ll get some pick-up, because Rick does make quite a good point.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.