On Oct. 10, Mary Cleaver, a B.C. woman in her early forties, posted a note to Facebook explaining why she would not be voting for Stephen Harper in the federal election, even though his party’s economic policies might benefit her young family.

“You’ve underestimated us,” Cleaver wrote in the post, addressing Harper directly. “On Oct. 19, we’re not voting for our bank balance. We’re voting for change because we want the caring Canada of our youth back.”

Cleaver’s post went viral; in the days before Monday’s election, it was shared in the thousands from coast to coast (I first came across it when I saw friends in the Maritimes posting it to social media). Among those spreading Cleaver’s message were disenchanted Conservative supporters and staunch progressive voters eager to disseminate any comment criticizing Harper. But the group I noticed linking to Cleaver’s post most enthusiastically consisted of people my age, in their twenties — a demographic often deemed unlikely to show up at the polls, yet clearly inspired by the notion that a person base their vote not on how it might affect her bank account, but on how it might affect the lives of others.

Say what you want about this campaign’s bizarre ugliness — from the Conservatives’ pointless, xenophobic niqab rhetoric to the reality that some political candidates, such as Alex Johnstone of the NDP, need to be told that photos of Auschwitz are not fodder for penis jokes. (Johnstone apologized recently for a joke she made on Facebook in 2008, in which she remarked that an electrified fence at the Nazi concentration camp looked comically phallic; she also said she didn’t know what Auschwitz was until the scandal broke).

But you’d be remiss if you failed to acknowledge that this was a remarkable campaign for youth engagement; a Liberal win makes this almost impossible to refute. From the spike in voter turnout at advance polls to the mass proliferation of post-voting selfies — this campaign was rife with an unusual passion and flare for the democratic process.

People still may not be voting at the rates they should be, but they are at least talking about politics. And if they’re not talking, they are likely listening, watching or reading something because political discourse, whether partisan, balanced, or incomprehensible, was almost impossible to ignore this election season. (A Facebook event called “Stephen Harper’s Going Away Party” scheduled for 9:30 p.m. last night garnered a remarkable confirmed guest list of 427,000 people, and an additional 20,000 who RSVP’d “maybe.”)

“I’ve noticed people really recognized this was an important and decisive election,” said Melana Robers, 26, co-chair of the Toronto Youth Food Policy Council. “Young people realize they have an important role to play and are far less apathetic. More and more we are recognizing we are the makers of our own future and if we don’t stand up for the things we believe in no one else will.”

Roberts may be right about a spike in strong convictions among young voters — and a waning apathetic spirit. But I have a different theory about high youth engagement with politics this election cycle: our election was simply too long to ignore.

If you’re a politically uninformed person (I would know — I was one for a very long time) you typically disregard non-entertainment news when your country is not in the midst of a campaign. And when it is in the midst of a federal election — usually five weeks in Canada—you likely tune in twice: once when the campaign kicks off and again the day before you’re supposed to go to the polls, at which point you hastily read whatever campaign literature you can get your hands on.

But the protracted election cycle gives voters no choice but to marinate in the issues of the day, and is infinitely beneficial in an age where search engines and social media sites filter out content they deem irrelevant to our personal interests. Yes taxpayers have to foot the bill for a long election, but some things — a healthy, engaged democracy for example — are well worth the time and money.

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