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Voting should be compulsory
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Discuss.
stargalaxtive wrote:The right to vote is as important as the right not to vote, and sometimes has to be exercised.
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It would simply lead to millions of people voting that have no idea.
It might force some to think about there vote but many would not, just make a badly thought out judgement that could have serious implications, some people would no doubt just vote at random, a worrying thought......
It also disguises the problems that we have, i.e. lack of choice between the main parties, a distrust of politicians and a feeling of powerlessness.
i also think the continued economic success contributes to low turn out. if there was a big slump i would imagine voter attendance would rise again..
I don't think voting should be forced. If people aren't voting it is because their vote is meaningless or the options are so woeful that there's no point. as Blagsta said, if everyone can't be arsed, then something is wrong.
Mind, when the level of political debate by the Government of this country is anti-semitic racism, hate-filled personal abuse and downright lies, then it's no wonder nobody votes.
Put a "burn the lot of 'em" option on a ballot paper and I predict that turnout would be about 99%.
if i decide not to vote ...it will not be through apathy ...it will be my political choice and my political statement.
since when did i worry to much about legal?
fine me ...
I don't think it should be compulsorary though. Voter apathy is a result of disillusionment with the parties and this can't be ignored.
alienation, nihilism, general dislike of elections, of the system, it obviously shouldn't be made compulsory, the best thing to do is to encourage people to vote and those TV which your post has reminded me of is a step in the right direction, shows how influential it is, but making people vote just strips away civil liberties but you don't have a problem with that do you?
I agree completely with this statement. But I think rather than making voting compulsory, steps should be taken to appreciate why people are not voting. People are not voting for two reasons: one, there is no choice ("whoever you vote for, the Government still gets in") and two, in many constituencies voting is pointless (if you're a Tory in many northern cities, or a Labour fan in the Lake District, for instance, you might as well stop at home because your vote simply doesn't count).
The freedom demanded was the freedom to choose to vote. Opportunity not obligation.
Credible choice? There isn't.
Nobody but the blue Tories or the red Tories will ever get into power under the FPTP system. A choice between the devil and the deep blue sea is not a choice.
You fall into the trap of believing that the only method of political participation is at the ballot box. This isn't so.
Many people are disillusioned with voting because Blair and Howard are just about indistinguishable on most issues. The difference is largely style rather than substance. This doesn't mean that they don't participate politically: the anti-war, anti-capitalism and anti-hunting ban demonstrations were huge, pressure groups such as Greenpeace have hundreds of thousands of members, and organisations such as Fair Trade and jubilee 2000 have made consumer choice a political statement in many cases.
Political participation, at all levels, is as buoyant as it ever was, but people understand that Westminster politics has become largely irrelevant in modern times. People don't vote because it makes no difference. A solitary cross every five years has no impact on anything, as was proven beyond all doubt by a party who pledged at an election that they would not bring in top-up fees (and were duly elected) and then did so anyway.
well we all know what happened in germany after the first world war when that happened.
Look at Germany. Lots of things happen there, it's stable, and, um, it's proportional.
Lukesh, I agree entirely, except don't think that the FPTP unduly favours Labour: the most-elected party in the C20 was the Conservatives, who ruled for over half the century. FPTP creates a democracy like in the US, where you get to vote for dumb, dumber or a no-hoper (like Nader). And dumb and dumber just take it in turns.
The rise in fascism in Germany was due to the weakness of the constitution to prevent its own destruction and the fact that there was no established culture of democracy among the people who had until 1918 been ruled by the Kaiser. Britain however, has one of the most well established democracies in the world and was one reason why fascism never took off here in the 1930s
Point?
FPTP is a farce. Pure PR is a farce. What works is a compromise between the two, as is seen in Ireland and Germany (those two notorious unstable regimes).
In Germany half the parliament is elected in an FPTP system, with constituencies, but then, with the second half of the seats, parties have their allocations "topped up" so that the parliament is pretty much PR (there being a cut-off of 5%: poll less than this and your contribution is ignored). You get the stability of FPTP (radical votes are wasted votes) but you allow smaller parties to influence the democratic process.
in that respect, we'd all be living in space if T-Rex didn't stop to do a shit one day millions of years ago.
How many "safe" Welsh seats were there? I can't think of very many.
As I said, you'll never see a Labour MP in Penrith and the Borders constituency, and you'll never see a Tory in Keighley or Sunderland.
gather together a bunch of meth addicts, talk with them a while. After they explain to you that the only way that they can have sex is doggy style so that they can both look out the window at the same time for the cops. Come back to me and tell me that they are productive members of the voting population. :yeees:
The way the system of democracy works is that those who are educated (or care) about a subject will have a voice. And hopefully the ridiculously ignorant will be too stupid to know that they should care.
"The right to vote is as important as the right not to vote, and sometimes has to be exercised. There is nothing patriotic in voting. Locally, the Plaid Cymru MP (in my area) is immovable, and nationally, New Labour are immovable. So, I can't help but feel my vote would be wasted. It's a shame - this is the first time I can vote in a General Election and I was rather looking forward to it - but with New Labour and the Tories being near clones of each other, that would make it difficult to change anything.
I disagree completely. (with voting being compulsory) Look at the recent Iraqi elections. The turnout was estimated to be at 60%. Considering the amount of violence and instability in that country, this seems like a decent figure. What was the turnout in the 2001 UK General Election? 59%. Will it be lower this time? Of course it will. The way to increase the number voting is to re-engage them in the political process, not through a process of compulsion. Compulsory voting sounds very authoritarian.
Ideally, there would be an option on the ballot paper saying "none of the above" or something like that. If voting was ever made compulsory, (and in a healthy democracy, it shouldn't) that option should be made available."
Actually, not really...
Look at Scotland, the Labour/Lib Dem Executive put through some notable reforms...
Like paying for all Scottish students' tuition fees.
Luke may have a point...for once!
People are so fucking bored of politics, it might make a difference...again, look at Scotland - you've got Labour, Tories, Liberal Democrats, Greens, SSP...makes politics a bit more colourful and representative.