5 May 2005
Things are very different for me since the last time I voted.
I almost didn't vote this time. I couldn't be arsed. My vote is meaningless. Blah blah. Then, though my mum wasn't there in person, she managed to pop up in my brain and nag me to do it, because, all clichés aside - people died so that I could, and countless thousands more wish they could, and so in all honestly, I couldn't not vote.
I almost couldn't vote at all, because they didn't send papers round to allow me to register and I wasn't aware of the 11th March deadline until about the 15th. It took me a while longer, but I finally realised that I might be eligible to vote at my old address, and finally got round to checking, confirming and completing the application form for a postal vote mere hours before the deadline.
Mostly, I felt a bit discombobulated because voting SNP wasn't an option, and if you were listening to "Any Questions?" on Radio 4 a couple of weeks ago when Alex Salmond was on, you'd understand why.
But.
I chose to live in London, and so I have to deal with the choices that are available to me.
Looking at my ballot paper I was a bit lost - I knew nothing about any of the candidates, they'd done nothing personally for me, so it was almost eeny meeny time.
Obviously, I immediately discounted the Tories and the Greens, which meant it came down to a choice between Labour and the Lib Dems.
What really clinched it was the fact that I couldn't find anything about what the Lib Dem candidate stood for - not in the first three pages on Google. Not in the Guardian's candidate guide. Not anywhere.
So, feeling slightly uncomfortable, I started going through the voting record of the Labour bloke... and very nearly went for the Lib Dem candidate, but for one thing.
He voted against a bill to make Incapacity Benefit means tested, and that did it for me.
Some of you will have realised by now that disability issues are a big thing for me, and for all I mutter about being part of the forgotten generation that nobody campaigns at, that's one area where politics becomes important for me.
So I put my cross in the box, got my identity witnessed and sent off my postal vote.
I'm curious though - what is it that makes you vote (or not vote)?
I have, throughout my 39 years never cast a single vote. I have concientiously spoilt my ballot paper every time until I was disenfranchised from even that by the tories introducing the poll tax, going to court over refusal to pay for years after, and finally disapearing off the electoral register in order to avoid the fines that ultimately arrived.
In a nutshell I say:
'It doesnt matter which way you vote: the Government always wins'
Or possibly 'vote labour and still die horribly'
Seems to me the lib dems are getting closer to old labour, new labour are now old tories and the tories are the new BNP. for fuck sake, why cant we live in a anarchist utopia... sorry is it rude to talk about politics at the dinner table?
blah rant blah. i'm going to pick up my organic vegetables now, from guess where? the same building they are using as my local polling station...
Thank you for taking the trouble to vote. Now you have a right to complain if you need to. Apathy is the downfall of our society.
I always vote, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant. It's my civic duty to at least make a simple little cross somewhere. I'd feel like I'd missed a chance to speak out if I didn't.
Not that my team has won in recent years ...
Its important not to confuse voting with meaningnfull political activity.
Grass roots activism has far more use and impact than ticking a box.
Its also important not to dismiss perspective difference as apathy.
What thinking person would actually want to put there name to voting in a liar or a scaremongering neo facist to lead them?
The choices before us are no choices atall.
The fact that we perceive it as a choice says much about the machine in whose wake we stand.
Its not a sinister machine controlled by shady men in dark suits, its a consensual reality machine which we all agree to.
If we stopped consenting life would be different.
I put it you that if there was an alternative we would all jump to it.
And the main reason there isnt an alternative is because we spend our
entire lives being fed an analysis of our situation from the perspective
of power rather than the perspective of personal and individual responsibility.
I feel strongly on the subject. I'll be quiet now.
I agree with your mother. Now you have the right to complain. All you have to do is look at the 2000 election in my country where George Bush won. We learned the hard way that your vote DOES count.
I vote because it's important. Because I have the right to. Because the first time I voted was the first time 80% of my country was allowed to. When you see people of 98 standing in the sun for 9 hours to vote, you know it's important to vote.
Although unlike you I voted for the party and the party policies. I didn't look up anything about my candidate and I didn't read any of the crap stuck in my letter box. It may be that I didn't understand the whole election thing, but I thought the local elections where for the people who run my area and this is for runs the country.
Oh and your moms smart. I second her thoughts.
I voted Conservative. I've been informed by the erstwhile owner of this blog that I am the first person she knows who's admitted to being a Tory.
Anyone want to join my fanclub?
Neil - No.
Sorry.
Pah.
Don't worry - I'm forming my own political party in time for the next election. I just want to feel the thrill of getting complete strangers to vote for me!
If the Elvis Presley party can get 67 votes or however many he got, I'm sure I can get something representative.
"...discombobulated". I do like that word. Must try and work in into my blog next week.
Meanwhile, keep voting. Otherwise we get the Govt. we deserve. Although I did (vote), and don't feel I've got value for money this time.
I think Reg Keys has more moral fibre than TB.
Well, I've ranted plenty about the election on my own blog, so I won't repeat it here... but I'm curious; why did you immediately discount the Greens? In the same breath as the tories no less!
I'd have voted Green if we'd had one standing in Walthamstow. But as it was, I just had the Big Three, UKIP and a Socialist to choose from.
The only options, therefore, were to vote for someone I didn't believe in; stay at home and get labelled "apathetic" (despite being politically active); or spoil my ballot and get lumped in with the idiots who thought they could vote for three candidates. In the end, I chose the 'idiot' route and wrote "None of The Above" on my paper.
I really don't buy the "apathy" angle though. The people I know are disillusioned not apathetic. As my flat-mate said; "I'd walk three miles through freezing rain at 8am on a Sunday morning to vote for someone who genuinely represented me. The polling booth is just around the corner and it's a lovely day outside... apathy is really not the problem".
I vote so that I can complain.
Some stats for you regarding this current election:
61.3% of the electorate voted - the second lowest post-war election turnout (the lowest being 2001 with 59.4%).
63% of people who turned up on the day did not cast their vote for Labour.
Less than 22% of the entire UK electorate voted for Labour.
God bless Democracy.
I complain so that I can vote.
>
> I vote so that I can complain.
>
That's another line I hear a lot but don't understand. If a government does something that you believe is wrong; how does it make it any less wrong whether you voted for them, for someone else, or for nobody at all?
And surely everyone not only has a right, but a moral obligation, to speak out against those things they find wrong. Modern democracy has been corrupted in so many ways that it's a perfectly legitimate protest to refuse participation.
Marking an 'X' on a piece of paper is not what gives a person the right to denounce those things they believe to be unethical. That's conferred by being human.
If even a quarter of the people who didn't bother to vote in the US election last fall had bothered to make the minimal effort to go out and cast a vote against George Bush instead of complaining about how their vote really wouldn't really count, or rationalizing somehow that that no action is somehow superior to (perhaps a less than ideal) action, or believing that the opposition didn't have a snowball's chance, then maybe I would be spared the aggrevation of seeing that smug, smiling idiot face on my TV nearly every day for the next four years. That's a good enough argument for casting a vote - no, make that "casting YOUR vote!" - in an election.
Sorry; I'll go home now.
... the online home and (not very) alter(ed)-ego of Ann McMeekin, a recently freelance Web Accessibility Consultant.
... passionate about many things, most of which will turn up on this site at some time or other.
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