Appendix C – Learning from initiatives overseas

Appendix C – Learning from initiatives overseas

 
 

The Committee’s Terms of Reference for the inquiry required that it examine:

…opportunities for introducing creative approaches to electoral education taking into account approaches used internationally and, in particular, in the United States, Canada, Germany, United Kingdom and New Zealand.1

In the absence of Australia’s system of compulsory voting, many countries face the dual challenge of encouraging young people to enrol and also to vote. Fostering greater civic awareness is equally challenging. The following appendix outlines how this challenge has been met overseas. The appendix is divided into three sections:

Encouraging greater civic awareness and engagement

Canada

 

The decline in young people’s civic engagement has been of major concern to Elections Canada. In response, the organisation has adopted a multi-pronged strategy, including:

Student Vote has been a very successful initiative in Canada to provide students not yet of voting age with the opportunity to experience electoral processes through parallel elections in their schools.

The program was first trialled in 2003 during the provincial elections in Ontario. Over 825 schools participated from 103 ridings in the province, representing approximately 72 per cent of all Ontario secondary schools. Editorials and the results of the parallel elections were published in regional daily newsletters.

The program has now been replicated at the 2004 and 2006 federal elections, the Alberta 2004 provincial election and the 2005 provincial election of British Columbia.

Schools and students are essentially tasked with running the elections themselves. In summary, the program is as follows:

Mr Taylor Gunn, Chief Electoral Officer of Student Vote submitted that Student Vote’s success lies in the strong partnerships built with a range of supporters including Elections Canada, thousands of teachers, and the local and national media outlets.3

United Kingdom

 

The Electoral Commission and the Hansard Society in the United Kingdom have now conducted three ‘audits’ of political engagement. Using the following 16 indicators, the latest poll (2006) involved interviews with a representative sample of 1,209 adults aged 18 and over across the UK:

Knowledge and interest

Action and participation

Efficacy and satisfaction

Findings from this latest audit suggest that:

…part of the solution to political disengagement must be to begin to manage expectations of politics, how it is done and what it can deliver. If ‘politics’ is to be recast, it could usefully blend the best components of representative democracy with more direct, participatory mechanisms, provided that the direct forms of participation do not undermine or supplant established representative institutions. It is clear that more work still needs to be done in this area, and in the areas of political education, if we are to encourage not only increased political engagement, but also informed engagement.4

The aspiration to re-build the relevance of politics was at the heart of the UK Electoral Commission’s recent public awareness campaign – ‘If you don’t do politics, there’s not much you do.’ The campaign combined:

The campaign aimed to make politics personal by showing the multitude of areas of everyone’s lives that ‘politics’ affects, as well as challenging the view that ‘I don’t do politics’ and creating the right climate for politicians to ‘get out the vote.’

The UK Electoral Commission, in partnership with MTV, have also run a ‘Votes are Power’ competition, challenging 14 to 24-year-olds to devise a creative idea that will engage young people to ‘turn opinion into action’. Major prizes, including Apple Macs, are on offer and entrants can use any medium they choose to get their message across.5

Germany

 

Germany’s political history has, in some respects, made democratic engagement an important element of civics education. In 1952, the Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/BPB) was established to promote democratic awareness and civic participation. Its main activities include the organisation of seminars, events, study excursions, exhibitions and competitions, and the distribution of a range of publications.

The BPB specifically caters to young people by producing multi-media kits and by providing training activities in sports clubs.

Encouraging voter registration (or enrolment) and voting

United States of America

 

Founded in 1990 by members of the United States recording industry, Rock the Vote is a non-partisan, non-profit organisation which aims to motivate young people to participate democratically by registering to vote, voting and speaking out. Rock the Vote has implemented a variety of strategies to encourage young people to register, including:

Rock the Vote works primarily because of its website; it is a communication format that reaches out to young people on an ongoing basis. The website www.rockthevote.com includes features such as a regularly updated web log covering the big issues affecting young people each day, a comprehensive reading list, archives of Rock the Vote media, advertisements and campaigns, special features such as a calculation clock of student debt, ‘how to’ guides for getting involved in rock the vote and other community organisations and Rock the Vote merchandise.

In the recent mid-term Congressional elections, a $1.3 million lottery was used to entice voters in Arizona to vote. A series of television advertisements were also produced and publicly aired, with a number of Hollywood actresses encouraging young women in particular to vote for their first time.8

Canada

 

Elections Canada also made a concerted effort to increase young people’s voter registration levels in the lead up to the 2004 federal election:

New Zealand

 

In the lead up to the 2005 General Election, the New Zealand Electoral Enrolment Centre introduced a text messaging service whereby eligible enrolees could request an enrolment form via text message.

In the first two weeks of the campaign, the Centre received close to 18,000 text messages requesting enrolment forms. The initiative saw double the number of people wanting enrolment forms in the first fortnight of the Enrolment Update Campaign than in the 2002 election. The Manager of the Enrolment Centre remarked that ‘The new technology seems to be making it easier for people to get an enrolment form’ and noted the enthusiastic response from young people in particular.9

United Kingdom

 

The recently published Power: An Independent Inquiry into Britain’s Democracy (http://www.powerinquiry.org/) has advocated extending the franchise to 16-year-old citizens.

Civics education initiatives

United States of America

The Centre for Civic Education
 

The Centre for Civic Education promotes understanding of the federal Constitution by constructing curricula for the teaching of civics education, and through its publication of student texts explaining the functioning of the Constitution.10

The Centre runs the US Department of Education’s “We the People” civics education program, among others. Mrs Melissa Rasmussen provided the Committee with extensive information on this program, having received a grant to attend the Summer Institute professional development program in July 2005. Mrs Rasmussen found:

The National Constitution Centre, which consists of a museum and library opposite Independence Hall in Philadelphia, functions both as a monument to the Constitution and as the headquarters of an organisation which engages in broad public education programmes.12

Kids Voting USA
 

Kids Voting USA is an interactive civics curriculum taught during election campaigns. Studies of this program have found that students influence their parents to pay more attention to politics, and parents encourage students to participate more actively in civics activities at school. This process begins with Kids Voting’s emphasis on peer-group conversation, through which students appear to acquire an interest in partisan debates. In these debates, students learn to appreciate the importance of strengthening their knowledge so as to back up their opinions. Students then initiate conversations with parents, and in doing so, gain confidence as young citizens who have the ability to influence others. Parents respond by paying more attention to news and by acquiring opinions they can use in subsequent conversations with their children.13

Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)
 

CIRCLE promotes research on the civic and political engagement of Americans between the ages of 15 and 25. Although CIRCLE conducts and funds research, not practice, the projects it supports have practical implications for those who work to increase young people’s engagement in politics and civic life. CIRCLE is also a ‘clearinghouse’ for relevant information and scholarship. CIRCLE was founded in 2001 with a generous grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts and is now also funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It is based in the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.

American Democracy Project
 

The American Democracy Project (ADP) is a multi-campus initiative that seeks to create an intellectual and experiential understanding of civic engagement for undergraduates. The goal of the project is to produce graduates who understand and are committed to engaging in meaningful actions as citizens in a democracy.

The goals of the project are to:

New Zealand

 

Australian College of Educators submitted that ‘In New Zealand, the establishment of “ Wallace” awards for good practice in civics education has engendered enthusiasm and provided a means to lift its profile.’14

Canada

 

The Department of the Senate referred to initiatives in of the Canadian Parliament where substantial investment in education programs, both on-site and in the Provinces, is made. One of its flagship programs is the Teachers Institute on Canadian Parliamentary Democracy, where each year, for one week, seventy teachers are competitively selected for an intensive professional development program in Ottawa , fully funded by the Canadian Parliament. The cost for the five day program in 2005 was $CAD213 867.79.15

Elections Canada also undertook several projects in partnership with non-governmental organisations interested in civic education.

Germany

 

Civics education in Germany has sought to build a strong democratic culture and support for the new democratic institutions created following the Second World War. Civics education essentially became not only a prominent educational subject but also a cornerstone of the new democracy.

Since that time, civics education has progressed along a distinct trajectory, from re-education programs implemented by the Allies and civics education based on the promotion of harmony in society, to the institutionalisation of civics as a subject of study in all universities. In 1976, the Beutelsbacher agreement saw tolerance as a key element of civics programs and the ideas that:


Footnotes

1

Inquiry Terms of Reference. Back

2 Student Vote, Program Summary, < http://www.studentvote.ca/federal/pages.php?id=7>. Accessed 24 November 2006. Back
3 Mr Taylor Gunn (Student Vote Canada), Transcript of Evidence, 4 December 2006 , pp. 38-41. Back
4 UK Electoral Commission and the Hansard Society, 2006, An audit of political engagement 3, Executive Summary. Back
5 See Australian College of Educators, Submission no. 10, p. 3. Back
6 International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 1999, Youth Voter Participation: Involving Today’s Young in Tomorrow’s Democracy, Stockholm, pp. 45-6. Back
7 Anderson, J.B. and R. Martinez III, 2006, ‘Voter’s Ed’, The New York Times. Back
8 Gold Coast Bulletin, ‘Enticing Americans to vote’, 30 October 2006, p. 39. Back
9

Elections NZ, 2005, ‘Txts set enrolment request record’. Available online:
< http://www.elections.org.nz/news/eec_media_txt_170505.html>. Accessed 29 January 2006. Back

10 The Center’s site at < http://www.civiced.org/> outlines a curriculum for teaching civics at high schools. Back
11

Mrs Melissa Rasmussen, Submission no. 106, p. 9. Back

12

The Center’s website is at < http://www.constitutioncenter.org/>. Back

13 McDevitt, Michael, Sprio Kiousis, Xu Wu, Mary Losch and Travis Ripley, 2003, ‘The civic bonding of school and family: How Kids Voting students enliven the domestic sphere’, CIRCLE Working Paper 07, Centre for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, United States, p. 1. Back
14

Australian College of Educators, Submission no. 10, p. 3. Back

15

Department of the Senate, Submission no. 28, p. 11. Back

16 The Centre for Applied Policy Research, Civic Education in Germany . Available online: < http://www.tolerance-net.org/news/podium/podium084.html>. Accessed 6 February 2007. Back
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