Well, not really.  But I went to one – a vote mob that is.  On Saturday April 30, 2011 I went to the Edmonton East vote mob to see what all the hubbub was about.

A little background:  Rick Mercer of the Rick Mercer Report challenged the 3 million youth over 18 to get out and vote this election, as they made up a large number of the uninterested/unaccounted for 41% of us that didn’t vote in 2008.  University students across Canada have been posting videos on YouTube and getting recognized on local and national news for their heightened engagement in the upcoming federal election on May 2, 2011, most notably for these ‘Vote Mobs’.

So, I decided this would be a great way to see if vote mobs might actually work to engage more women in the democratic process. 
While there was a pretty even mix of young men and young women, probably equal in representation, I had a feeling that these groups are actually groups of already engaged citizens showing the world how proud they are to vote.  No problem with that, in principle, but the truth is vote mobs themselves actually leave no room for interaction with potential voters, or encouragement of voting, aside from yelling at passers-by “Are You Voting?!”, which isn’t a particularly scientific way of ensuring action at the polls.

I don’t want to be too hard on anybody though.  The truth is, the Vote Mob videos have gone as viral as any Canadian politically themed video on YouTube and in turn increased awareness to youth so that young people are talking to young people about voting, which seems to be encouraging people to say out loud that they are committed to voting.  All of this is good in my books – and may be actually more important than the actual rallies themselves.  And the kicker?  The politicians are listening.  With as much enthusiasm as each leader could muster, youth were formally addressed on MTV’s Impact: Elect This show which aired on Saturday evening.
But where does this leave the rest of us?  I haven’t seen any “Mom Mobs” or “Working Single Parent Mobs” or “Women fed up with being told there’s no such thing as women’s issues mobs”... (I guess the names aren’t as catchy).  My point is, the rest of us have claimed feeling unheard, unmotivated to vote, and angry with our current system and we account for an even bigger portion of that 41% non-voting pie than students.  So how do we make sure we are out there tomorrow, making our voices heard loud and clear?

We commit to do it. 

We get up in the morning, take our kids to daycare and tell our boss we will be late because we’re voting.  Or we take our kids to the polls with us after work. 

We tweet to our followers who live in our riding that we are going to vote, then we meet for drinks after and wait to see who our next Prime Minister will be, and how our voices added up.

We post on our Facebook, we text, we talk to other Mom’s in the school drop off line or women at work that we are going to vote because it is our responsibility.

We commit to spending as much time at the polls as we do creeping on Facebook at our friends pictures of their kids, or as much time as we spent talking about and watching the Royal Wedding this weekend.

It’s pretty simple:  We don’t need a mob.  We need to vote.