Pakistan has the second highest youth population in South Asia. However, based on Gallup Pakistan’s Exit Polls records, in the last eight elections, just 31% of eligible young people voted, which is 13% less than the average turnout of voters overall. According to the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency (PILDAT), more than 18 million young people were registered to vote in the 2018 election, but they did not cast a ballot, and it is estimated that this number will rise to 23 million in the general elections in 2023. While in India, youth turnout in the 2019 General Election was almost 2% higher than the overall turnout.
The first question that comes to one’s mind after coming across these shocking statistics is why is the young voter missing on election day in Pakistan?
There are many systemic factors which are hurdles in young people’s way when it comes to voting in Pakistan. The most notable are the legal restrictions which make the process of voting difficult and logistically burdensome. A case in point is Pakistan’s electoral law, which does not allow one to vote far from the polling station where a vote is registered.
It is not that the country’s young people don’t show up to the polls because they are lazy or apathetic; the country’s youth is systematically disenfranchised.
The vast majority of the state’s institutions severely lack youth representation and as a consequence, are not able to build any political capital with young people. Take for example, young parliamentarians in in Pakistan’s National Assembly. The national legislature just has nine members under the age of thirty, which means there is only about 2.6% representation for a subsection of the population that makes up 63% of the population.
The institutions of our society – families and schools in particular, do not nourish democratic culture in young people. Student unions continue to be banned in Pakistan, for absolutely no good reason except the whims of a dictator. Electoral malpractice ranging from disfranchisement of a certain group, electoral violence, inaccurate voter register, clientelist politics, maladministration of polling and partisan gerrymandering can all be discouraging for young people to come to the polls on election day. These are all structural elements which contribute to the electoral alienation of the country’s youth.
It is not that the country’s young people don’t show up to the polls because they are lazy or apathetic; the country’s youth is systematically disenfranchised.
We cannot presuppose electoral empowerment without coming up with innovative ways in the digital sphere that can appeal to young voters.
It is also worthy asking if the electoral process is a single-day or single-stage event. What happens on election day, and what proportion of the eligible population turns out to vote, depends on what happens prior to and after the elections. If youth participation is encouraged in the campaigning phase, significant issues are addressed in the campaigns and included in manifestos, and the government, political parties, and the Election Commission of Pakistan appeal to the youth’s interests, then we should confidently assume that young people are more likely to vote.
If young people feel tangibly represented in parliament and witness issues that they are concerned about being deliberated in legislative assemblies, they will have more trust in the electoral process. The scholars of electoral politics conceive the electoral process as a cycle, which include a series of stages: the first is the design and drafting of legislation, then is the recruitment and training of electoral staff, followed by electoral planning, voter registration and the registration of political parties. This is usually followed by the nomination of parties and candidates, the electoral campaign itself. On election day, polling and counting is followed by the tabulation and declaration of results, and the resolution of electoral disputes if any arise. In Pakistan, all stakeholders involved in managing our electoral system ought to think about the benefits of involving young people in all of these stages. If this is done reliably, this will have massive implications for youth voting behavior.
It should give us some solace to recognize that the electoral empowerment of the youth is a dynamic process. Electoral empowerment meant something else entirely over a decade ago when the internet and social media platforms were unheard of.
We cannot presuppose electoral empowerment without coming up with innovative ways in the digital sphere that can appeal to young voters. Similarly, the phenomenon of low turnout of young voters is context-driven and therefore can be addressed with context-specific measures and policies. The 21 point agenda of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on enhancing youth political participation may be useful in certain cultural contexts and under certain conditions but cannot be universalized as the best or only way of empowering young people to participate in the electoral process. Nonetheless, indigenous measures of adding to the numbers of young voters are not on the cards either.
The way forward is to bring the challenge of electoral estrangement of youth in Pakistan into the limelight, in order to understand its complexities and the context in which solutions have to be innovated. We may thus be able to finally offer the country’s young people an opportunity to use their voice on election day, and sow the seeds for the flourishing of democratic culture.