A website designed to make voting easier ahead of Alberta election is right at your fingertips

Laef Kucheran was only 15 when he came up with the idea to create a website designed to engage voters.

The now 22-year-old noticed there was an information gap when it came to voting, especially among the younger generation.

In fact, during the 2021 federal election only 76 per cent of Canadians voted, with the age group of 18 to 24 having the lowest turnout at 66 per cent, down two per cent from the previous election in 2019.

Kucheran wondered how he could break the cycle of people not exercising their democratic right to vote.

That’s why he created VoteMate.org, a website designed to engage youth and other voters in politics.

Making politics simple

Elections Canada research shows that young people don’t vote because many feel like political parties don’t care about the same issues or policies they do, Kucheran says.

“This is not really true,” he says, adding most political parties do have policies and promises to address youth concerns.

However, young people still feel they are not represented.

“This indicates that there’s some sort of knowledge gap.”

Now that he is about six years into his project, he has discovered another hurdle that keeps people from engaging in politics: they don’t have time.

“Trying to make it accessible became my goal,” Kucheran says. “How do you make politics something that someone can do in their spare time in about five to 20 minutes?”

He designed VoteMate much like other social media sites. All political candidates have profiles that are easy to swipe and click through, meaning users can quickly learn about the candidates in their district.

Additionally, Kucheran realized that for municipal elections, “people really don’t know how to vote,” which is why he created a “Make a plan to vote,” feature.

The feature takes you through a step-by-step process of how to vote, starting with determining if you’re eligible. You can even set up a text reminder through the app to notify you on election day.

Where is the information from?

VoteMate’s system allows political candidates to create their own profiles. Under their profile, they can add a biography and their policies.

If a candidate chooses not to upload a profile, information from their personal website will be pulled and added in.

As Kucheran focuses on Alberta’s upcoming election, he has been uploading the promises and policies manually for the main two parties: UCP and NDP.

He boils it down into the main points with a goal to minimize “the spin” that parties tend to add to their promises.

Kucheran started reaching out in late March to Alberta’s candidates, asking them to upload their profiles to the site. But the process started out slowly. Now, as more are being added, he sees a trend of more UCP and Green Party candidates signing up.

“I’m struggling to get NDP candidates on board,” he says, adding that he is hopeful that more will be added as the election draws closer.

VoteMate’s future

As Kucheran continues to improve and adapt VoteMate he is looking toward building more journalistic features.

“Whenever I talk to friends who are less engaged in politics and news… it’s always coming back to them not understanding what a good policy necessarily is,” he says.

“They don’t know because they’re not engaged politically, and they don’t have the prerequisite knowledge.”

Politics makes more sense when you’re immersed in it, Kucheran says, so he hopes VoteMate can provide users with the tools to understand policies and promises with more depth.

“It’d be incredibly useful to somebody who is stressed and doesn’t have the time to research that on their own,” he adds.

Alberta’s election

As Alberta’s provincial election on May 29 nears, Kucheran hopes that VoteMate can help assist voters and get more Albertans to the polls, but he plans to expand to all of Canadian politics.

Kucheran encourages young voters, or those new to politics, to start small.

“Everything seems so big and insurmountable,” he says, adding he hopes the website makes voting less daunting.

Kucheran looks at the candidate profiles one at a time and selects the issues he cares most about. He then compares them one by one and determines who aligns with his values the most.

“If you take things individually, like a little piece, and just focus on that, not worrying about the larger picture, you can get a whole lot done.”