Jock's Place - Britain 'needs compulsory voting' (like a hole in the head) - Comments

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Neohippy'84 — Wed, 10 May 2006 11:02:51 +0000

and simon... a lot of people don't even know there's anything to have opinions about... and thus the distraction of 500 + channels dooms us all.

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Neohippy'84 — Wed, 10 May 2006 11:02:47 +0000

This post has been removed by the author."

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Neohippy'84 — Wed, 10 May 2006 11:01:24 +0000

thr PR debate's a bit of amoot point without other constitiutional reform, no? cause every govt that gets in is gonna want to retain FPTP to keep it that way. - i dunno, i'm still learning about all this

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Simon — Mon, 08 May 2006 13:56:49 +0000

Joe,

All people are political. All people have views. All people have opinions. Not all people participate. I want people to engage by voting on the basis of what already goes on inside their skulls.

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Joe Otten — Fri, 05 May 2006 16:54:38 +0000

Simon,

Forcing people to vote does not force them to engage with anything. Engagement with politics is something that happens inside the skull. Thankfully, laws relating to events inside the skull would be rather difficult to enforce.

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Simon — Wed, 03 May 2006 19:38:50 +0000

Ah yes, well, I'm pro-PR, pro-compulsion.

Why?

Because I can see no great harm done by forcing people to cast ballots (at most) once every couple of years - and I can see a great lot of good that would come out of it in terms of re-engagement with the disaffected. And disaffection with specific parties and policies will be felt in other ways - most notably that people will switch allegiance.....

After all, what have we to fear by this measure?

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Jock Coats — Tue, 02 May 2006 21:26:42 +0000

Mind you, I suppose there's nothing stopping someone being pro-PR and pro-compulsion, after all Australia is cited for both.

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Jock Coats — Tue, 02 May 2006 21:25:58 +0000

Absolutely agree on your last point. I wouldn't ever argue for compulsion. And I agree that high turnout good" simply because I believe in participative democracy.

I would *really* love to know for real why Hain has changed his mind - and wonder secretly if it's our fault. A pro-PR Labour NEC member I work with says a lot of them felt really badly let down that we didn't back Robin Cooke's attempts to get some form of PR as much as they had hoped we would."

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Joe Otten — Tue, 02 May 2006 16:41:17 +0000

Hmm, yes Jock I think you are right - turnout statistics can't differentiate between disengagement, high satisfaction, and pointlessness due to FPTP.

However I think my point still largely applies because those going on about turnout and compulsory voting do seem to see it in terms of disengagement with politics.

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Jock Coats — Tue, 02 May 2006 07:15:36 +0000

Joe, I kind of see what you are getting at, but not sure I agree totally.

Surely a high turnout could just as much be a signal of mass deisappointment with their representatives manifesting as people actually wanting to go out and vote for change?

With the current system, we end up with safe seats" where parties actually do very little beause an area has become a bit of a personal fiefdom regardless of how well they are actually represented - and especially so at local elections where parties perhaps have to be more selective about what they can afford, in resource terms, to "target".

But I agree that compulsory voting would render any such discussion meaningless and that would be a wholly bad thing."

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James — Mon, 01 May 2006 12:39:10 +0000

Interesting Policies and Proportional Representation" - I take it that acronym was deliberate? :)"

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Joe Otten — Mon, 01 May 2006 08:15:39 +0000

Repeat after me: high turnout good, high turnout good.

Turnout is a kind of performance indicator for politicians. And some of today's innumerate politicians are so immersed in target culture that they don't know, or perhaps don't care the difference between changing their performance and fiddling the indicator.

Or to look at in another way, compulsory voting would be abolishing the indicator, a vain attempt to make a secret of how badly they are doing.

Britain 'needs compulsory voting' (like a hole in the head)

Jock — Mon, 01 May 2006 07:50:31 +0000

There's a new cover version of that popular jingle "Britain 'needs compulsory voting'" out by those wild and crazy dudes at the Institute for Public Policy Research. Backing vocals are provided by Pete "Ha-ha" Hain and Jeff "Ho-ho" Hoon.

But to make a mark in these days of digital media downloads, SMS voting and supermarket sweep the boards it would have to have that something special, and it doesn't. In Ballot Box Jury's "hit or miss" ratings, it gets a resounding "miss". Along with The Truants' version of "We don't need no edgewekashun" and ASBOs "Leave Them Kids Alone" it's always going to fail to sparkle unless some carrot goes with the stick.

To me the carrot in this case has got to be making that vote count for something. Is it any wonder that people lose interest when the voting system means that if you don't predict the (usually) one and only winner correctly you get nothing - nobody to represent your views. And even when you do, you get someone else's choice anyway in the form of a single party candidate.

When in many constituencies and council wards more than half the vote is literally wasted, counting for nothing, and people see little difference between one group of politicians vying for their vote and the next, just forcing them to make up their minds is a recipe for disaster. They even suggest having a "I don't care" box so you wouldn't even have to make up your minds, just tear your minds away from Corrie for half an hour to get down there and do your "civic duty".

No doubt it's another thing they want to add to the National Identity Register in time, and when we're all bar-coded or chipped and pinned or whatever the next stage will be polling station officers will be able to send out little electric shocks to people at five to nine in the evening if they haven't voted yet.

It's clearly policies that count the most though. When we do reach out to a lower than average voting group they do turnout. The Lib Dems have proved this time and again with the student vote. Make the effort and you can lift turnout. Okay, maybe it's not yet the most exciting thing on a student's schedule for the week, but we have turned the corner in many places of student voting apathy.

If you finalise your policies through a focus group intended to be the most bland cross section of everyone in the country round a table of six people, you're not going to produce something to engage everyone - just something that doesn't offend too many.

A couple of years back, Jon Snow, Chancellor of Oxford Brookes University was asked about voter apathy at the end of his Chancellor's lecture. I thought his response was spot on; people are not politically apathetic in the main, they just often channel those energies and opinions in other ways. They didn't see the ballot box necessarily as the way to make their feelings clear about the Iraq war, so they took to the streets in droves. They join Greenpeace or Amnesty. They shamed the government into action last January when they rushed to give their widow's mite to the Tsunami emergency appeal. Strangely, this was just what Peter Hain, in his more enlightened moments said in 2001 - why has he changed his mind?

So, IPPR, if you want to make a difference, perhaps you could have a little think about your initials:

Interesting Policies and Proportional Representation would change peoples' opinion and engage them, not yet more New Labour authoritarian compulsory schemes.

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