The local elections in Crawley saw an overwhelming landslide victory once again for the none-of-the-above party. I believe that where I was standing there was a turnout of something like 44%, but other places were much lower. In the past we have had turnouts getting close to 10% in some areas.
Being involved in an election campaign and going to the count it is easy to get wrapped up in who is winning and who is losing and to kid ourselves that we have massive support or that someone else has massive support and to conveniently forget the bigger picture.
Just for reference, here is the bigger picture itself:
Just imagine if someone could inspire even half of those non-voters. It would be more than Labour and the Tories combined!
Is compulsory voting the answer? Personally I don’t like the idea. One of the BNP members at Tilgate mentioned this to Jayne and she gave a reply which I would never have thought of when she asked how they could complain about a ‘nanny state’ telling us what to do all the time and then want to get even more nannyish by forcing people to vote.
(Jayne is much more mature than I am when it comes to the BNP. I don’t talk to them at all or even acknowledge them.)
When it comes to low turnout I always think about elections where I have not voted and the reasons why I did not vote. This happens more often than you might expect. It could be an election for a union post or a staff representative on the pensions board, or a building society giving members a vote in positions on the board. Sometimes all I know about the candidates is their name. I don’t have enough information to do anything but vote at random so I don’t vote.
If voting in those elections was compulsory what good would that do? I would just vote randomly and possibly for a totally unsuitable candidate. (Is that what attracted the BNP bloke to the idea?)
When it comes to non-voters I tend to not blame them for not voting but instead blame myself, my colleagues and my opponents for not giving them enough reason to vote, and I will probably continue to do so unless and until the turnout approaches 80%.
Until then we are just scrapping over who comes a very distant second to the non-voting crowd.
I blame the “None Of The Above Non-Voter”.
This sounds very ‘snobby’, and I can’t prove it…but my instincts tell me that there would be a high correlation between the regular Non-Voter and the regular Sun-Sky-Rupert-Subscriber-With-A-Crap-Education.
These Non-Voters are made dumb, not just by those in power – but all by themselves.
Of course, these Non-Voters are critical for the party-politicians – especially the ‘educated’ Tories – who can only retain control by ensuring nearly 70% do not vote.
The sooner we use the same democratic voting system of one of our former colonies – India – the better for all who believe that democracy is not just a word to be played around with.