discussion Difficulty in using your vote - little sympathy from me. Non-political General Election thought

[Ian M]

In Denmark at the last election there was a record high of blank votes. Far more demonstrative than just not going.

Are we? We’re talking about the differences between systems, not actual politics.

It was you that started to describe the system

No, we are describing the ballot papers and illustrating the difference - and after all it is a current topic all over Europe at the moment.
No one is telling who you should vote for.
So let's stop being woke for a change, and let freedom of speech come to the fore.

As above when the comments start to edge toward actual political differences we are no longer discussing ballot papers.
And it has absolutely nothing with woke.

 

[Guest]

That's different though Jakko, a spoiled ballot just shows the voter's laziness

Writing something about not wanting to vote for any of the above is not lazy, IMHO. Laziness would be not going to vote despite wanting to and having the opportunity to, but deciding not to bother. Which is also distinct from not going to vote because you don’t care, or because you think they’re all just as bad, or because you would really like to vote “none of the above”.

 

[PaulTRose]

Well.....7 45am and ive been and done the deed

I voted how my heart led me not tactically or spoiled my ballot sheet etc........as much as i dispise politicos as money grabbing self centred lying weasels who are out of touch with the needs of the 'people' i still think its important to vote........and if you dont vote then you dont have the right to complain in the future about what they get up to

 

[boatman]

Well.....7 45am and ive been and done the deed

I voted how my heart led me not tactically or spoiled my ballot sheet etc........as much as i dispise politicos as money grabbing self centred lying weasels who are out of touch with the needs of the 'people' i still think its important to vote........and if you dont vote then you dont have the right to complain in the future about what they get up to

WELL DONE Paul but you say we have no right to complain if we dont vote so will it make any differcene if we do complain ? i dont think so

 

[PaulTRose]

Just my opinion thats all....and everyone is allowed one of those

 

[Guest]

Perhaps we should have started a 'none of the above party'......we would be in power tomorrow :smiling6: :smiling6: :smiling6:

Yep! politics begins after the last drop of glue or paint is applied... Sod building more houses, what we need is more model shops...

 

[Guest]

Well, been and done the deed, and as I do not want to vote for Gaza, or recognise Palestine which has appeared on a lot of parties leaflets, because they are not the important items in this country, whereas housing, NHS, lower taxes, employment etc are. I voted for the party that actually wants to sit in opposition for the next five years and hold the government to task and not just sit in the bar downing subsidised booze while the country goes to the dogs.

 

[Jim R]

The missus and I have had a nice walk in the sunshine and put a cross on a bit a paper. Although disillusioned with politics in general I do agree with Paul, our democracy may not be perfect but it's a lot better than the alternatives.

 

[Gern]

Maybe we should try the system used in that greatest of all cities - Ankh Morpork. It's run on the democratic system of ' one man - one vote'.

Lord Havelock Vetinari is the Patrician of the city. He is 'The Man', and he has 'The Vote'.

 

[Peter Gillson]

a review of our last election found, unsurprisingly, that voting using 38 votes is very difficult and a number of ideas have been suggsted regarding reducing the number of votes we each have. Reducing it to what number is difficult - 10, 15, 20? Any number is pretty arbitary.\, and it doesn ot address the problem of having over 100 candidates.

however one suggesting is very interesting; to reduce the number of votes to an as yet undecided number, but also giving each voter a negative vote, so we could vote against somebody and the vote would reduce their votes! Unpopular candidates could end upwith a negative number!

i like the idea, but I doubt is it will be adopted.

Peter

 

[Jim R]

Well the results are in and broadly as the polls suggested.

The results show perhaps the most extreme discrepancy between votes and seats of any UK election. The Liberal Democrats got 12% of the votes and their 70 odd seats represents 11% of the seats in parliament. Pretty close. However the winning Labour party got 34% of the votes but that gave them 64% of the seats. At the opposite end of the scale Reform managed to attract 14% of the votes, a little more than the Liberal Democrats, but that translated to only 1% of the seats.

I am not making any political statement but it is food for thought. Is our democracy democratic?

 

[Guest]

IMHO, the main problem with having 38 votes is that they basically want you to vote for everyone you would like to see in parliament, which comes across as a difficult task to me. I mean, how would you know and remember what all these people stand for? And even if you do, how do you weigh them against each other to get to a top 38?

I used to think that a negative vote was a good idea, but no longer. People are generally far more vocal about things they don’t like, than about things they do like, so I suspect that if you give people a positive and a negative vote, the race will soon end up as being to see who has the least negative votes instead of the most positive ones …

 

[Guest]

The results show perhaps the most extreme discrepancy between votes and seats of any UK election.

Yep, that’s pretty much what I was talking about earlier. The LibDems (and the Greens, too) seem to have gotten a lot of votes in a few constituencies to give them a good number of seats, while RUK (look the colloquial meaning of that up in a Dutch–English dictionary ) got a few votes in many constituencies, and so get far fewer seats with a similar number of overall votes. It has its advantages, like having a new government the next day already, but on the whole I think I prefer proportional representation.

 

[Gern]

All change!

Makes me wonder though. Almost 60 years ago, I read a statement by one of my favourite authors - Robert Heinlein. He said the definition of an honest politician was one who stayed bought! I agreed with him then, and I've seen nothing since to make me change my mind.

But then, mankind is the most ruthless and vicious predator the world has ever seen and politics is our attempt to control that. So I guess any system that stops us slaughtering each other and leaves the streets relatively safe for us to use can't be all that bad.