2015年经济学人 年轻选民 无情的谬误（在线收听）

Young voters

Apathetic fallacy

Online voting could transform Britain's electorate

Fancy a snap election?

ONE-BY-ONE they approach the lectern, explaining why they will cast their votes.

“Regardless of whether you do or don't, policies will be implemented,” says Princess, an activist, to loud cheers.

As politicians from the main parties all make their speeches, the atmosphere in the lecture theatre at Queen Mary University, in east London, is electric.

This is what Citizens UK, a network of university bodies, youth groups and religious gatherings, does so well:

using existing civil-society organisations to spur young people into political action, and holding invigorating assemblies to meld them together.

It is also the exception. At the 2010 election, according to Ipsos MORI, 44% of Britons aged between 18 and 24 voted,

compared with 76% of those aged 65 and over (national turnout was 65%). The gap is relatively new: it was half the size in 1970,

and has grown significantly only over the past two decades. It is also starker than elsewhere.

In the German election in 2013, for example, 64% of first-time voters cast their ballots, compared with 75% for over-70s.

Britain's low youth turnout helps to explain why the outgoing, Conservative-led government has protected public spending on older voters

(guaranteeing increases in the state pension, for example) while doing little to solve a housing shortage, which affects the young most acutely.

There are several reasons for the low turnout. One is that more Britons are going to university and ever-more live in short-term, rented accommodation.

Both trends make it harder for authorities to register them. Another is that Britain's first-past-the-post system holds down insurgent parties—like the Green Party—

which are popular among young voters but stand no chance of winning more than a handful of seats. This makes voting seem less effective.

Perhaps the most convincing explanation is that mainstream parties, with their soporific committee meetings,

are ill-attuned to a generation more at home in dynamic organisations like Citizens UK and 38 Degrees,

an online campaigning network which claims to have over ten times as many members as the Labour Party.

What to do? In the long term, political parties should become looser, more open and more welcoming.

But one simple improvement would be online voting; a measure which John Bercow, the speaker of the House of Commons, has said he wants to see by 2020.

That would both accommodate the footloose lives of young Britons, but also reflect how they like to do their politics:

online and with reference to their social networks. Estonia introduced online voting in parliamentary elections in 2007. What is Britain waiting for?