Led by young Internet campaigns step up before Canadian poll (AFP)

Montreal (AFP) - election of the Canada campaign has triggered a flurry of political activity online, led by young people showing no sign of abating before national polls Monday.

More young people are following the election by a proliferation of "crowds to vote" - gatherings of University student which are filmed and uploaded on YouTube for encouraging young people to vote.

Events are organized through Facebook and Twitter, are intended to combat the involvement of the terrible Canada youth of 18-24 years. In 2008, only one-third of eligible voters in this instalment to cast their ballots.

A crowd of vote staged this month on the bilingual campus of students of the University of Ottawa feature boldly dressed in red and white - Canada? s national colours - cheering and waving posters extolling the virtues of the democratic process.

"Today I realized people die for democracy." I am voting for the Mine, "read a sign." The optimistic rally was filmed and posted on YouTube, the music of British pop singer Mika, "we are young."

The crowds to vote almost 40 were staged through the Canada and posted on sites such as leadnow.ca, led by a group of independent defense, led by young people.

Jamie Biggar, co-founder of leadnow.ca, said that the mobilization online provides "ways to make their voices heard and to feel some property over this election and our policy."

Commitment line preceding the Monday vote was nothing less than a phenomenon, said political activist Judy Rebick.

"There was a massive campaign." I have never seen anything as she, "Ryerson University Professor told AFP."

"Not since the 1988 election I have seen so much citizen action completely independent of the party." Young are fun. They are creative. "It is inspiring."

Some of the online campaigns target Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Project democracy and Catch 22 campaign are two anti-Conservative vote strategic sites who have taken these past few weeks.

An Angus Reid survey released on 27 April revealed that more than a third of Canadians (37%) considering strategic voting to reduce the chances of a specific part forming the Government, even if this means casting a ballot for a candidate they don't like.

Shortly after it launched on 13 April, an entirely different anti-Harper site called shitharperdid.com went viral.

An approximately 4.5 million pages have been viewed on the Web site, which has registered more than 700,000 hits, according to Sean Devlin, an actor and a filmmaker who created the site using humour to shake up the voters of their apathy.

Another project, non-partisan, apathy is boring, uses art, media and technology to encourage active citizens on - and offline.

A commercial produced by the group just has aired on MuchMusic, MTV video channels and online, said founder Ilona Dougherty.

Dougherty, said the trade involving Canadian musicians and celebrities urging young people to vote was a "huge quantity of traffic," especially on Twitter.

"We want to really make the voters for the first time." It really is the theme of our campaign. We wanted to do something, cheeky and fun. Online reaction has been really very well so far, "said Dougherty.