Is it worth voting in elections?
In the UK, 46 million1 people are registered to vote in parliamentary elections. Sadly, 39million of those votes are worthless!!
The political parties know this, so their policies are not designed for the nation as a whole, but for winning the marginal seats and gaining or retaining power. Pollsters, spin doctors and focus groups proliferate, and the resulting policies can totally disregard what the public want nationally.
The 1832 Reform Act created parliamentary seats in the new industrial towns and abolished the rotten boroughs where there were tiny electorates, often controlled by one individual. Today, the first-past- the-post voting system means that the safe seats – the ones that never change hands – are the equivalent of the old rotten boroughs.
In these safe seats, the MP is chosen by a small party caucus, and the electorate can do no more than give the election a superficial sheen of respectability. This is not democracy but a complete sham, and sadly, the reality is that the vast majority of the electorate have a vote that is totally worthless.
The BBC2 states that a swing to Labour of 5% in 2015 would give them an outright parliamentary majority, whilst the Tories need a swing of just 2% for an overall majority.
There are currently 650 seats in the House of Commons, and in 12 of the 17 elections since 1950, less than 10% of the seats changed hands.
How many seats will change hands in 2015? Only twice in the elections since 1950 have more than 100 seats changed hands. In 1997, it was 184 seats, and in 2010 it was 115 seats. So it’s a reasonable to expect about 100 seats will change hands in the next election. If 100 seats change hands, it means that 550 seats will remain the same, 85% of the seats will have an MP selected, not elected.
Opinion polls and petition sites have shown that, nationally, that the vast majority want a publicly-run NHS that is democratically accountable and this majority is quantified by Dr Louise Irvine3 as 84%.
The pollsters and petition sites have also been recording the concerns about both the costs and the quality of service from the franchised railway companies and privatised utilities and the increasing demand for these services to be brought back into public ownership. The record number of complaints against the energy companies speaks for itself.
It is probable that a majority in the Labour Party and a majority of Labour voters also want these policies, but the perception of the Labour leadership and its advisors is that these policies will not win the all-important marginals. In fact, only the Green Party offers these policies, and they certainly cannot win an election based on first-past-the-post!
The London Borough of Croydon is, in some ways, a microcosm of the UK as a whole. It has two safe seats and one marginal. Croydon North (Labour) and Croydon South (Tory) are the safe seats, and Croydon Central (Tory) is the 50th most marginal Tory seat. It is a seat that has changed hands in the past, and it would take a swing of 4% for a Labour victory. So it’s a seat Labour would need to win, if they were to gain an overall majority.
Croydon North is mainly modest terraced houses and council or ex-council flats. Croydon South is affluent suburbia and the commuter belt, whilst Croydon Central is a mix of the two.
In 2010, Labour won Croydon North with 56% of the votes cast, the Tories won Croydon South with 51%, and Croydon Central with 40% against Labour’s 34%. The turnout was 61% in North, 69% in South and 65% in Central. Taken together, the three constituencies show an overall turnout of around 65%, which means a third of those registered to vote, did not bother to vote.
These figures tell a very discouraging story. The two safe seats were only safe because there were a number of opposition candidates that split the vote. In the marginal seat, 60% of those who voted did not vote for the victor!
This is not democracy. The two main political parties know this, and are responsible for perpetuating this sad state of affairs purely because only they can ever form a government. If British politics is to become democratic, the electorate has to start fighting back, taking control of the electoral process. A good starting point might be discovering why those who didn’t vote chose not to.
It might be that they could be encouraged to vote tactically. In a marginal seat there could be a campaign to vote for an agreed candidate, who was not from one of the three main parties and was committed to electoral reform.
Alternatively, there could be a campaign for voters not to vote and thereby reducing the turnout to an embarrassing low level, which could force the politicians to act and create a more democratic system.
More suggestions welcome!
Michael Gold,
@radicalmic
1http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/electoral-statistics-for-uk/2013/stb—2013-electoral-statistics.html
2http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25949029
3 Letter to the daily Mail, 13th August 2014 by Louise Irvine, a London GP & National Health Action Party
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My suggestion would be instead of a general election a yes/no vote on are you happy with your MP? If yes they stay on if no the have an election and the MPs party is excluded.
Stephen, That is an interesting suggestion. Not certain how it would work but……….
What do you expect it to achieve? It seems like it would force all but the safest seats (where winner has > 50% of vote) to rotate the top two candidate parties. This might just encourage “alliances”, where the support of the excluded party is transfered to an allied party.
Is this idea any good to you guys?
http://www.iharrow.com/guestpost/better-democracy-for-harrow-by-praxisreform/
(It’s a campaign I ran a short while back, which seems to promise a little success at the next election)
Do we need representatives at all? Sending an MP to London goes back to a time before the telephone, when travel was at horse speed. The system is obsolete.
If the web is secure enough for our banking then it is secure enough for every individual to vote on every motion put down in parliament to the local council.
Not everyone has a PC you say: We all have feet, but in the vote for police commissioners the turn-out was only 12%.
Voting could be made as easy as telephone banking or voting for ‘strictly come dancing’. Which, no doubt, it will when our MPs vote for their own redundancy!
Lionel, Personally, I don’t have any disagreement with the principle. Michael
many good points – no answers.. Until you face up to and engage with Arrow’s Paradox – which proves that no overall voting system transfers voters wishes best across the range of possible circumstances (distributions of opinion) don’t waste my time with flogging PR which gives at least disproportionate power to minority parties, allowing them to swing the balance. Also it means that no party need stick to its manifesto once it goes into coalition. So voters have even less leverage. It gives parties power over individuals who they rank order to become representatives and a party is a much more fluid and less nailable entity than an individual.
With our current mix of opinions I think the form of transferable vote system which we rejected in the 2011 referendum (anyone remember?) would be better. (I was involved in the campaign, which was run pathetically imo and Conservative funding + much tacit Labour connivance bedazzled the nation into thinking it was an irrelevant waste of money.)
What I don’t think should be taken seriously is parties promoting PR because they stand most to gain from it, effectively passing more control of party programs to politicians haggling together away from the voters. As a minority party you know you can propose many less practical more seductive less thought through items as if you have any deference to democracy you will give large chunks up while sustaining covertly or obviously some larger ‘partner’.
It’s easy to see the flaws in the frying pan you’re in rather than the fire underneath.
There’s a hierachy of importance determined by wealth. From poor to rich as follows:-
non-voter, voter, party member, politician
As you move along this line, it becomes more wealthy and less representative of the electorate.
Couple this with billionaires buying politicians and effectively buying the electorate with propaganda.
So representation is a problem using any form of election. Our present system is very unrepresentative.
The other problem is information. Voters cannot be experts on every party’s policy position and on every candidate standing in an election. And so we are easily guided by misleading and biased media.
The only solution that guarantees fair representative samples in parliament and gives time and access to detailed information would be a jury type system randomly selecting from the electoral roll a 1000 people to be our representatives in parliament. It sounds mad but every objection falls flat. A 1000 people would give a broad cross section of society with enough knowledge and expertise. They could discuss issues at length and none would have to compromise their principles. It would also be very difficuly fir any of them to be bought or nobbled
Neil,
My immediate reaction is whether 1,000 would be a large enough sample to be accurate. But it would certainly be better than the present sorry mess. Michael
There is no political rivalry, it’s all a carefully choereographed piece of showmanship designed to keep the public distracted from the real business of government. None of the manifesto pledges are legally binding, none of the policies offered give any real choice, all of the political elite work together and cosy up in Westminster.
Politics would be far better in a reformed environment where party affiliation were abolished and politicians forces to act as professional ‘advocates’ representing their constituents full-time in Parliament and taking their instructions through local government (who would manage and administer constituency issues), the Parliament would then be representative of the people and the politicians free to elect a national government from the ranks of elected MPs. This would be a much more democratic system than we have right now where the whole process is controlled by unelected Whitehall Manadrins, big business and the 1% (social elite).
20th Century Party Politics are dead, let’s lead the way in world politics and reform the outdated, corrupt and immoral political system and give people proper representation instead of ‘Punch & Judy’ politics.
Paul, Couldn’t agree more. Michael