Election night
I sort of agree with Puff Daddy’s Vote Or Die campaign. I also agree with voter apathy. Strange contradictions?
I don’t believe so.
I agree fully with voting. It has to be the greatest privilege in a free society. You have the chance to change the direction of this country and participate in making it even better.
I also agree that politics is a messy subject to talk about. It is difficult enough talking about a subject when you have all the facts. Even harder when you don’t have them. Politicians don’t make it any easier by not telling you the facts. They make it harder to engage by participating whipped votes that don’t benefit anyone but their own party instead of the people they represent. So I can fully appreciate why you would want to not vote.
The way I think about it is that enough people don’t vote then that would send a clear message that the current type of politics isn’t working. I don’t believe merely crossing out your ballot achieves the same effect. After all it gets counted towards voter turn out, albeit as an abstention. If you want to abstain then don’t turn up to the vote at all. That way your message is still voiced in the low turn out figures but they can’t misquote the figures. The mandate to govern is severely reduced.
On the other hand if you do decide to vote you shouldn’t base it on social prejudices, where you grew up or how your parents voted historically. It shouldn’t be based on personalities or smear campaigns or TV debates. If you haven’t taken the time to research and revise the policies of all the parties standing for election then would you not be wasting a vote? And wouldn’t a wasted vote be the same as abstaining? I’d argue it is worse.
Without any thought you’ve placed a blind vote for your party of choice based on prejudice and not facts. As is so often with blind votes it isn’t really your choice if the vote is blind. The argument that you’ve seen what Labour or Conservative parties did in the past is an weak and irrelevant argument. The only period it should extend to is The last 5 years of a parliament and not what the party was 20 years ago. The argument of voting per your class is a similar and similarly stupid one. You should vote with your head and not with your heart based on all the facts available to you which are relevant for the past government and the next successive one.
If you aren’t in possession of all the facts or you haven’t bothered to find them out then you shouldn’t vote. How can you be sure tot don’t agree with the other party if you haven’t read their policies, or closely followed the political debate?
If you vote based on a Facebook campaign alone then you shouldn’t vote. If you vote because a celebrity told you how to vote then you shouldn’t vote. The same is true if a friend tells you how to vote.
It takes a day at most to read and digest the manifestos. A day out of five years. That is a day you should be willing to give up if you feel passionate about voting. And if you don’t think that is something you can do then are you really passionate about voting?
I don’t especially care who you vote for, just as long as it is not a blind vote. In which case why not consider not voting at all?
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