Non-Digital Voters

Midterm election in the U.S. Provincial elections next door in Canada and there are many voters that are not harvested because they are not on Twitter.

Twitter and online presence in general, is a time-consuming feat.  You need to follow politicians’ utterances regularly and monitor public response.  This is a mammoth task because Twitter is as fast as a heartbeat and many tweets are lost in space, unless they are from the Tweeter in Chief who has millions of followers, not counting hashtags, the foot soldiers.

In addition to time, being active online also needs some basic knowledge of English, French or Spanish, for North America at least. China is not in this equation because people in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Asian countries are millions more than Canada and the U.S. combined, and their phones and tattoos are in Chinese.

Despite our love hate relationship with social media, it is here for now and affects how politicians are elected and how their performance in corridors of power is assessed. But, politicians’ exclusive use of social media might cost them some votes because there are thousands of potential voters that are not active online.

They do not care what is trending. They don’t know socially accepted words for certain lifestyles.  They don’t like writing, even if it’s 280 Twitter characters.  They don’t want their photos online. They basically prefer to fly under the radar. 

They have opinions about the state of the union or Canada but prefer to voice them in family picnics, cattlemen’s clubs, dairy producers’ co-operatives, fitness centres, book clubs, motorcycle clubs, staff room, favourite bars, temples, churches and synagogues.

They want to discuss bread and butter issues with ‘the man we sent to Washington or Ottawa.’  It is seldom a woman, but we won’t go into that today.  Non-Twitter voters want politicians to look them in the eye and promise that out of town banks will not lock up and go because of electronic banking, for example.

Voters that are not active online cause chaos during elections for voting outside the box created by the media and polls.

Political handlers advising men and women who want to be premiers of Canadian provinces or the next Canadian Prime Minister insist on online presence.  They tell politicians that you have signed your own suicide note if you are not online, especially Twitter which delivers short messages.

They should also remind them about voters that still prefer to see candidates as much as possible because they will vote for a face, not a tweet.

By:  Nonqaba waka Msimang.