Scarlet has no desire for this to turn into a rant about people who don't vote and why they should really and how they are all enemies of freedom. Scarlet is just going to lay out a few of the reasons why I think these people don't turn up at the ballot box:
Apathy
Do I vote? No, can't be bothered. Surely this is the feeling of many British nationals who don't turn up? Whilst it is not entirely fair to say that everyone who doesn't vote simply doesn't care about what happens on the Governmental front it would certainly appear that in a good few places people merely don't consider it important enough to bother. Scarlet wonders what these people would do if we were in a police state like North Korea? Would the apathetic position continue or would it be a case of 'I wouldn't bother voting but I want that to be my choice not theirs' or would they submit? How often do the apathetic really use their freedom? The only time we consider freedoms important are when we go to court or engage in political activity (like this here blog), and how many of us do that?
What difference would my vote make? The (X Party) will just get in anyway
This one is an issue of the system, the dated FPTP system does tend to make safe bets of many seats in our Parliament. Of course the mainstream parties tend to treat this one with kid gloves, complacency is a big problem in politics and they have to make sure some people actually do turn up or we could get the wrong winner simply because no one bothered to vote for the person everyone actually wanted to win.
They're all as bad as each other
Why would you vote if you thought that all of the candidates were self serving imbeciles? It seems a fairly good question, most of us consider our politicians corrupt but go and vote for them anyway so shouldn't we just not bother going and wipe our hands of the whole sorry mess?
Scarlet looks at the modern political class and can't disagree with the position. To get any kind of political pull you need to know the right people and this upper middle class political clique is very much the old boy network of our time. However it is not the case that they are all like this! No seriously they're not, if you look at your ballot paper you will in all likelihood find a clean cut candidate amongst the Old Etonians. You've never heard of these people because nobody votes for the good guys, because all the people who would appreciate them are either voting for the system or staying at home. Scarlet believes that if you look down the list and see no one worthy of your vote you should do something to show it off, to use the freedom at your fingertips. You may not wish to stand for election yourself but why not join a party to try and make it better and more inclusive? Why not start an online blog and at least tell the world what you think? Perhaps we are getting round to apathy again....
Scarlet will vote tomorrow and Scarlet will await the results with the feelings of a true nerd. Scarlet will try to hold on to his freedoms because Scarlet cares, but it would appear that many do not. The question remains will they ever care? Is the voice of not voting as strong as that of the voter? Who knows, but tomorrow night the 60% of us that bother will have made a call, and I strongly hope we will vote right and save our nation.
No comments:
Post a Comment