HIP Politics - Voting

Election Fever or Voting Apathy?

Former political correspondent Kent Barker provides your guide to voting in the general election.

            The alarm is summoning you from slumber.  As you roll over in bed you realise it’s May 7^th - Election Day.  You must resist the temptation to pull the cover back over your head. There are important decisions to be made. Who to vote for? Whether it’s best to vote for a person or policies or party?  Indeed, whether to vote at all?  Perhaps you haven’t decided yet. Maybe you still have questions.  Let’s see if we can provide answers.

First you may ask: Aren’t there good reasons why I shouldn’t bother to vote at all? Politicians are all the same self-serving egotists; my vote wont make any difference as governments are usually elected with less than 50% of the popular vote; Russell Brand was right that grass roots activism actually gets more done; I don’t want to perpetuate an archaic parliamentary system where I can’t elect the upper chamber.

Well, yes, those are strong points.  But you can’t really complain about the state of things if you can’t even be arsed to participate.  And maybe not ALL politicians are in it entirely for themselves.  Some genuinely believe in public service and work hard for their constituents.  If you had a real problem with the bureaucratic state, it might be useful to have someone to fight on your behalf. As for Russell Brand, his argument for local activism doesn’t stop you having a national government as well. Finally, our current parliamentary system might be outdated, but there have been some genuine reforms recently, and it might change more if you voted in some younger more radical MPs and replaced old fogies like Sir Bufton Tufton.

            There’s another reason to vote. You might actually get a bit of a buzz from it.  Both because you’ve done your civic ‘duty’, and because, even if only in the tiniest way, your vote might actually make a difference.

Hmm. But if I do go into the polling booth, how shall I decide who to vote for?  Is it the party, their policies, or the local candidate? Or is it just a beauty contest between Cameron and Milliband?

            Well, the answer is all of the above.  If you really like one of the candidates in your constituency and believe they will represent you best – then vote for them regardless of party. If you really believe in the policies of a particular party, then vote for that party regardless of the candidate. And if you really think that, say, Milliband would make a better leader of the country than Cameron, vote for him rather than his party or their policies.

            That answer is useless.  It doesn’t tell me which are the more important factors. 

No, well only you can decide on your proprieties.  Often it will be a combination or a sort of instinct.  “I think this party’s policies are likely to increase/decrease the gap between rich and poor”.  “I want a party that cares about ordinary people rather than an elite”.  That sort of thing.

Well, what about tactical voting?  If I really support the Lib Dems or the Greens isn’t a vote for either of them wasted, as neither are realistically going to form a government?

Yes, that’s a tricky one.  I have a friend who is a member of the Green party and so really wants to get the Tories out both here in Hastings and at Westminster.  But if she votes Green she will, effectively, be taking a vote away from Labour who do have a chance of winning both locally and nationally.  So her Green vote could be entirely counterproductive.

So what should she do?

She could vote tactically for Labour but that would be to ignore her party commitment.  Plus the more votes her Green Party gets nationally the more legitimacy they have, even if they don’t win many actual seats.  So what she did was arrange a vote swap.

What’s a vote swap?

She found a Labour supporter in a nearby constituency with a massive Conservative majority.  He agreed to vote Green there on her behalf, and she’ll use ‘his’ Labour vote here in Hastings.

Isn’t there a danger that sort of arrangement would work for UKIP and the right-wing parties too?

That’s democracy for you.

I’ve been really impressed with Nicola Sturgeon and Leanne Wood.  How come I can’t vote SNP or Plaid Cymru?

The short answer is because they don’t have candidates in England.  But it’s notable that for the first time in many, many elections, a clear left wing message is finding a resonance across the UK.  The questions are though, will it be reflected in the way people vote, and will it lead to a fairer electoral system in the future where people who vote for smaller parties actually get the representation they deserve?  We’ll have to see.