Moncton lawyer finds a way to reach out to young NB voters
“My uncle voted, and he’s dead.”
If you’ve heard this line recently, you’re certainly not alone.
A video called “Y Vote NB” has gone viral on YouTube, receiving upward of 15,000 hits since the video was uploaded on Aug. 27.
Inspired by the “Don’t Vote Campaign” leading up to the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, the bilingual video begins with young, involved and well-known New Brunswickers telling youth they shouldn’t vote.
Current St. Thomas University recruiter and former Students’ Union president Duncan Gallant makes an appearance in the video, as does NHL drafted hockey player Patrice Cormier, MP Dominic LeBlanc and former UNB president John McLaughlin.
By the end of the video, the celebrities are telling youth how important it is to vote.
Brian Gallant, who will soon begin studying for his Law Master’s at McGill University, is one of the brains behind the video.
Gallant, 28, directed the Y Vote video with Dan Gillis and Moncton-based Botsford Productions. The group made the video using their money and pursued the project in an aim to tackle youth apathy toward voting.
“Youth apathy is a problem that has always existed and will most likely always exist,” Gallant said in an email.
“But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do something about it. This won’t be some miracle pill, but at least it’s a start.”
The importance of youth participating in the political process is something Gallant knows well.
A candidate in the 2006 provincial election under the Liberal banner, Gallant garnered 41 per cent of the vote in Moncton East against then-Premier Bernard Lord, who also appears in the Y Vote video.
Despite Gallant’s past candidacy with the Liberals, the video is nonpartisan and doesn’t endorse young New Brunswickers to vote for any certain party.
In order to appeal to young voters, Gallant and the rest of the team tried to make the video a combination of informative and edgy.
“We knew if we ‘played it safe’ young people would have tuned it out,” Gallant said.
When it came time to recruit familiar faces to deliver the message of youth voting, Gallant tried to pick out “amazing involved young people and famous New Brunswick celebrities.”
“We wanted young people telling young people to vote. I think youth respond to their peers much more positively than authority figures.”
With the video distributed only online, rather than on other mediums, social media websites like Facebook and Twitter have helped the video spread across the province and beyond.
Gallant said the group chose to take their message to the web because it’s primarily how young people communicate.
“It shows that the times, they are a changing. Politics has to keep up with those times if we are going to have young people participate in the political process.”
In a press release sent out to mark the video surpassing the 15,000 view mark, Gallant says initially hoped the video would get 5,000 views.
“If this video convinces one young person who wasn’t going to vote to vote, it’ll all be worth it,” Gallant said in the release.
To watch the video, search for Y Vote or Botsford Productions on YouTube.
