Fewer and fewer of Britain's electorate go to the polls
by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Nowadays ever fewer people believe it to be their duty to vote in local and especially general elections, the latter being the ones that decide who runs thins country, at least nominally.
In Germany during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and later even still people were often told, especially young people by their elders, that if they did not vote in elections they'd give their vote to the Reds, the Communists. This was a hangover frm the time of the Nazis.
While it was and still is total nonsense to claim that if you abstain from casting your vote it is a vote for “the enemy” - whoever “the enemy” may be – it is, nevertheless, sad that we, who can legally exercise the “right to vote” in more or less democratic elections do not use this right.
In some democratic countries, such as Australia, it is a legal requirement for every citizen of voting age to goo to the polls.
This is, I assume, being done so as too be able, in all honesty, to say that the governing party, a an example, got such a percentage of all the electorate and thus is the voters' choice.
This even works in a number of people who have no intention to cast their vote for anyone one on the ballot simply spoil their paper.
A nigh on 100% turnout, from legal compulsion, then makes a mandate a true mandate, unlike when the count is, say, as with the British “first past the post” system, whatever winning percentage for the party, from only say 40% of all voters turning up.
The British people have lost, so it would appear, all confidence in the politicians, political parties and the political process.
This is not surprising and little wonder, though, seeing the way things have been going in this country with politicians busy fiddling the system and getting very comfortably rich at the tax payers' expense. Nice job if you can get it!
Maybe it is actually also time that we not just reformed the system of MPs expenses and such like but that we actually got away entirely from professional politicians.
From what we keep seeing on a day-to-day basis in the way members of parliament – from all sides – and especially those on the government benches are removed from the reality of life of the ordinary citizen one could be lead to believe that parliament and parliamentarians exist in a parallel universe for, for sure, theyy are not on this Planet.
It is little wonder therefore that voters are totally disillusioned and believe – rightly or wrongly – that nothing they do as in the way of voting will make any difference.
The horrible truth is that they maybe are actually right for the more we see things going awry the more I am led to believe that there are processes other than a democratic one in operation to get people into government and to keep them there.
A revolution of attitudes is required and a revolution of the political system in this country, and that only for starters in way of revolutions.
Copyright © 2010
