If you want to see the political commentary fly online, just wait until one of the major candidates makes an appearance on television then perform a search for any of the parties across Twitter or Facebook. The retweets, responses, and links seem to boil and expand with amazing speed. That social media is playing a role in this year’s election is without question, certainly in the way the parties spread their messages and react to each other, but has it become a substitute for having your say through a vote? If you’ve already spent days expressing yourself online, are you more or less likely to do so at the voting booth?

There’s no hard numbers to suggest either at the moment, but it’s a question that often gets linked to a topic that has, the youth vote. According to Marc Mayrand, Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, there are 2.9 million potential voters under the age of 25 in the country. In the 2008 election only 58.8% of those individuals actually voted. As each election seems to be more balanced than the last and the overall voter turnout keeps dropping, the need to encourage those who have reached voting age to take part is drawing more and more attention.

Terry, one of CTV’s drivers, has added a sign to his car that reads “Worried about democracy? Stop tweeting, start voting”. He says he has nothing against social networks and is merely trying to offer a reminder that after all the political coverage and discourse is over, voting is still the most important step. His concern, he tells me, is that after people have their say online and retweet the messages of others, they may feel they’ve already had their say, and not realize that what’s voting for.

Is he far off? Aren’t political tweets themselves a constant reminder to vote?

There’s an interesting statistic that puts a twist on this thought. Elections Canada did a survey after the election in 2008 and found that 87% of those under the age of 25 said they had voted, yet the actual numbers show that only 58.8% did. Why the discrepancy?

Elections Canada attributes it two elements; the overrepresentation of voters who respond to such surveys, but more importantly social desirability, because if you’re a non-voter after an election there’s social value to saying that you went to the voting booths.This year Facebook has instituted an “I voted” button to allow users to show their participation online, to secure just that kind of social value, but how many of those clicking on that button will actually cast a vote? Like the surveys, are social networks creating a platform for non-voters to merely make an appearance without actually going through the motions on election day?