Don't vote.

[Salazaar]

People are apathetic as they do not trust ANY of the parties to do the right thing, can't blame them.
As for 'if you don't vote don't complain' - meh, they're all going to put taxes up, reduce X service, cut this, chop that & at the next election we'll all be whining again the same as last time & the time before that & the time before that....

I'll vote for the party that has the balls to tell it like it is, that isn't going to happen though.

Taxes are paid and then spent on stuff, that's how governemnt works. There is never going to be a situation where that isn't true, no matter who you vote for. Each party is going to have it's priorities and those are what you're voting for, but I pretty much guarantee that no party is ever going do exactly what you the voter would do if you were in power.

So instead of just moaning about how all the parties are the same, read their policies in detail, decide which suits you and vote! Only by exercising your right to choose can we ever hope to influence the way in which we're governed (however small that influence may be).

Failing that, stand and find out exactly how many other people support you and you brilliant/mental policies for a happier Britain!

[Phage]

Want to see what your vote REALLY counts for??

Check this out...

[

Voter power in Maidstone & The Weald
0.044

Constituency marginality
Ultra safe
In Maidstone & The Weald, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.044 votes.

I still prefer the Aus system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austral...ectoral_system

[TheAnimus]

Do you think you could find 2200 people near you who feel the same way? 'cos that's how many votes it takes (on average) to reclaim your registration fee if you run, yourself, as an Independent

Its not that which pisses me off its the fact that if you vote for an indie, you've got no chance of getting any major governmental investment.

Look at stupid bits of wales that have motorway. Then look at a cornwall despite having more car traffic still isn't even dual carrageway all the way, without one inch of motorway.

This is because too many of the locals vote lib dem. If its not a marginal that the current ruling government wants to please, you will not get money wasted on you as easily.

I often think it would be a lot better to have a party free government, but sadly its not a feasible idea.

[directhex]

Voter power in Maidstone & The Weald
0.044

Constituency marginality
Ultra safe
In Maidstone & The Weald, one person does not really have one vote, they have the equivalent of 0.044 votes.

Gawd...

The only way for that situation to resolve itself is with voter reform. Which requires party support. Only one party supports voter reform. So until masses of people vote LD, you get situations like this.

But as my numbers show, apathy is the limiting factor. Maidstone & The Weald has an electorate in 2005 of 74,054 and a turnout of 48,755, making 25,299 "I'm with stupid" voters. Tories got 25,670 votes, a margin of 14,856. People vote for Widdecombe because they've heard of her.

[mikerr]

If you don't vote you are shown in the statistics as someone not bothered to vote - not one who has protested.

If you don't like any of the parties, then protest by putting a cross in more than one box ... a spoiled vote, and it will be recorded as such.

That said, its a waste of a vote and counter productive IMO

[directhex]

Its not that which pisses me off its the fact that if you vote for an indie, you've got no chance of getting any major governmental investment.

Depends on how hung parliament is, as to how much power is wielded by the minorities. The more fragmented the party distribution gets, the better. 2 super-parties helps nobody - they just get the whips involved, and everything is a case of "which party has more votes this year" not "which side has more people voting on it"

[kalniel]

The only way for that situation to resolve itself is with voter reform. Which requires party support. Only one party supports voter reform. So until masses of people vote LD, you get situations like this.

Labour also put forward the Alternative Vote system. Only the conservatives don't want to reform voting.

But as my numbers show, apathy is the limiting factor. Maidstone & The Weald has an electorate in 2005 of 74,054 and a turnout of 48,755, making 25,299 "I'm with stupid" voters. Tories got 25,670 votes, a margin of 14,856. People vote for Widdecombe because they've heard of her.

This happened when I was in California with Arnie..

[Phage]

People are apathetic as they do not trust ANY of the parties to do the right thing, can't blame them.
As for 'if you don't vote don't complain' - meh, they're all going to put taxes up, reduce X service, cut this, chop that & at the next election we'll all be whining again the same as last time & the time before that & the time before that....

I'll vote for the party that has the balls to tell it like it is, that isn't going to happen though.

George Washington would have agreed with your sentiment. He disliked political parties as well.

"They [political parties] serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community"

[scaryjim]

Labour also put forward the Alternative Vote system. Only the conservatives don't want to reform voting...

One thing I find interesting is that a lot of people who support some form of proportional representation are also the ones who are vehement about keeping the BNP out of british politics. They tend to get very upset when you point out that a properly proportional voting system would give the BNP about 12 seats in Parliament....

[directhex]

One thing I find interesting is that a lot of people who support some form of proportional representation are also the ones who are vehement about keeping the BNP out of british politics. They tend to get very upset when you point out that a properly proportional voting system would give the BNP about 12 seats in Parliament....

The BNP should have every right to be a political party. We should have every right to tell them we're not interested in race politics.

Again, apathy fuels this kind of thing. The racist vote is much more motivated than the left-leaning slacker vote. If more people voted, the BNP might get more results - but if more people turned out to vote, their gains would be largely symbolic.

[kalniel]

One thing I find interesting is that a lot of people who support some form of proportional representation are also the ones who are vehement about keeping the BNP out of british politics. They tend to get very upset when you point out that a properly proportional voting system would give the BNP about 12 seats in Parliament....

It's a good point, and if those seats do represent a group of people then it's perhaps right that they have a voice in parliament, albeit one drowned out by more widely supported voices.

[scaryjim]

Just to clarify, I'd be quite happy with PR and BNP in parliament, or a benign dictatorship that banned them - it just amuses me that so many "liberal" and "democratic" people only want democracy on their terms. The fact is that the BNP have a sufficiently large supporting demos that they merit a place in a truely democratic government. My favoured electoral reform would be to remove as many decisions as possible from Westminster and devolve power to as local a level as possible. Decisions requiring consensus at a national level would be taken by a national "government" comprising representatives from regional assemblies, which in turn would be made up of elected representatives from local assemblies (probably the same size as current local authorities). This would all, of course, use some form of PR. It may prove necessary to have a few appointments at a national level - but then I'm not a career politician so I haven't written up extensive policy documents for this yet

My BNP figures, incidentally, were taken from the last European elections where they received just over 6% of the vote on a 33% turn out, so around 2% of the total available votes had everyone voted. But PR suffers the same problems of voter apathy and low turn out as FPTP - perhaps even more so, since as turn out goes down each vote becomes a higher and higher percentage of the total...


EDIT:

As a little afterthought - I wonder how the country would react to a PR system where uncast votes counted for empty seats in parliament, but for any legislation to be passed it still required a > 50% majority? It'd make all the parties work much closer together if 30% of the votes were automatically abstentions (although I guess it'd make it too easy to prevent a piece of legislation becoming law that way...)

[Saracen]

Labour also put forward the Alternative Vote system. Only the conservatives don't want to reform voting.

Oh please. That's utter rubbish.

Of course the Conservartives want electoral reform. Every party wants electoral reform. What the Tories don't want is Gordon Brown's notion of electoral reform, which tilts a system already loaded in Labour's favour because of the nature of constituency boundaries and voter demographics even further his way. I guess he'd like to abolish the tedium of having to get re-elected (or in his role as Prime Minister, elected for the first time) altogether.

For instance, take a look at the analysis of the 2005 election done by the Electoral Reform Society. It shows that under AV, the voting we saw would have increased Labour's majority by 11, the LibDem number of seats go up by 12, and the Tories go down by 23.

And, that's from a position where Labour already a proportion of seats far greater than than their proportion of the vote. No flaming wonder Brown supports it ... or at least, claims to.

The Tories do want electoral reform. So do Libdems. The tricky bit is going to find something everyone can support .... unless you expect turkeys to start voting for Christmas, and being enthusiastic about it.


But what really my goat about that claim is the notion that Labour and Brown want electoral reform, and the Tories don't. Labour have made promises about reform in three successive manifestos, and done nothing. Brown has made several speeches and promises, about Bills of Rights and so forth and done nothing.

Labour have been in power for 13 years, and have had a flaming great majority. If they really wanted reform, what stopped them?

They might claim they want reform, but if they really did, they had the power to do it. And didn't.

As for AV, it's got problems. It will preserve the constituency, but won't guarantee that the final winner gets a majority of candidates, and it won't guarantee that the parties in government are more representative of the wishes of the country, and that Electoral reform Society report shows that last time, Parliament would actually have been less representative. Small wonder, then that the Tories oppose it. But just because they don't want a system that even further disadvantages them than they already are doesn't mean they don't want change. They do. One change they want is to redo boundaries to make them equal sized (or more equal anyway), which would be fairer in that we each get an equal say, regardless of which constituency we live in ..... and by a wonderful coincidence, would reduce Labour's built-in demographic bias. That change, and others, they most definitely are in favour of, and have said so and called for many times.

So I call that statement as disingenuous, and invite you to consider that if Labour so much wanted change, as they say they do, they've had ample opportunity and what have they done in the last 10 years or so? Naff all.

[kalniel]

Labour have been in power for 13 years, and have had a flaming great majority. If they really wanted reform, what stopped them?

It's a fair point, though some would argue it's a blair/brown split. But in either case at least they have something about it in their manifesto - you say the conservatives support reform but if that's the case why don't they mention it rather than pledge that they would reject reform? The only significant change I can see is this ability to vote out MPs before they've had a chance to show what they're doing.

[aidanjt]

Probably because the voting system is the least of Britain's problems, right now.

[TheAnimus]

It's a fair point, though some would argue it's a blair/brown split. But in either case at least they have something about it in their manifesto - you say the conservatives support reform but if that's the case why don't they mention it rather than pledge that they would reject reform? The only significant change I can see is this ability to vote out MPs before they've had a chance to show what they're doing.

In my mind its worse to put it in your manifesto 3 times and do nothing, than not say your going to do anything in the first place, just my preference that thou.

The thing is as much as the tories might want reform, it has to be a reform that is fair and wouldn't risk hurting them before they will start wanting it seriously. Given the last proposal lost them over 20 seats you can't blame them.