‘It starts with young people’: underage Windsor-Essex students casting ballots in provincial election

Assumption High School students participate in an Ontario Election event. CTV Windsor’s Michelle Maluske explains.

Thousands of students across Windsor-Essex are participating in the Student Vote Ontario, funded by Elections Ontario.

The unofficial election is offered by CIVIX, a non-partisan charity dedicated to strengthening democracy.

“You hear people say that our democracy is broken, but I really don’t think it is,” Joe Sasso told CTV News Tuesday. “I think that not enough people are actually getting out and voting.”

Sasso is a geography teacher at Assumption High School in Windsor, Ont.

He has visited every single class – reaching more than 1,000 students – to explain how Thursdays vote will operate on Thursday.

Every student will get an online invitation to cast a ballot for the candidates running in Windsor-West, the riding where the school is located.

“I tell them, if you’re not voting, you’re giving your right to choose to someone else who is going to vote,” Sasso says.

“I know what decision I want to make because I want to try to make it (Ontario) a better place,” Grade nine student Ryhs Trudell says.

He understands his vote won’t actually form the next government, but he says this lesson at school will make him a life-long voter.

“You don’t want to live somewhere where you don’t have choice and you don’t have freedom,” Trudell says.

Fellow student Rose Ramo, also in Grade nine, says she is encouraging her parents and older siblings to cast a ballot on Thursday.

“I like to spread awareness to them so, they also take action and maybe they can make a difference,” says Ramo. “(They) shouldn’t stay at home because they’re not educated as much as I am.”

“I want them to be active in society, and this is the best thing that they can do,” Sasso says. “It starts with young people.”

Across Ontario, more than 2,300 schools across all 124 electoral districts in the province have signed up to participate, according to a news release from Civix.

Student Vote Ontario 2025