Results: UBC student's pie chart election explainer goes viral

A video on Canada’s low voter turnout created by a B.C. university student has gone viral, racking up almost a million views in a single week. In his video, Matthew Kowalyk uses a simple pie chart to highlight some disappointing statistics about Canadian democracy, including the fact that a whopping 39 per cent of eligible voters opted not to cast a ballot in the 2011 election. “Only 61 per cent of eligible voters voted – one of the lowest voter turnouts in Canadian history,” it says. Kowalyk, a student at the University of British Columbia, also notes the current Conservative government was chosen by just 24 per cent of eligible voters. That number only accounts for 18 per cent of the population, given how many people were under 18, unregistered, or ineligible to vote. Kowalyk posted the video on Facebook on Oct. 7, and was shocked to see how quickly it spread. As of Wednesday morning, it had already been viewed 930,000 times and shared 42,000 times. He told CTV News he’s “surprised but also encouraged that so many people have been interested.” Kowalyk said one of his main motivations for creating the video was to show people just how small a portion of the population can decide the outcome of an election. “I think our current system works less well the fewer people that get out to vote,” he said. “We end up with a less representative government. So more people means better results.” Kowalyk said he tried to keep his video as non-partisan as possible, and let figures from Statistics Canada and Elections Canada make his point for him. Some people might stay home on Election Day because they feel they can’t make a difference, but Kowalyk said that just isn’t the case. “The people who show up are going to make the government,” he said.