Seriously, Why Bother Voting?
Because of moving around an awful lot in my life, I have rarely voted. Now that I’m in Edinburgh I am settled enough to have voted in the last couple of elections and, now that I’ve done it, I find myself asking what the hell the point is.
That reflex response “Well if you don’t vote, you can’t complain” has always struck me as a load of old bollocks. In fact, never mind that, it is a load of old bollocks. When I first decided to cast my own vote, no matter how hopeless the party for whom I was voting, my reasoning was this: I didn’t want the slippery fuckers to be able to get away with it so easily. I knew I was wasting my vote in most ways, but I just wanted to head off that criticism, that smug “Well if you didn’t vote…”
Ultimately though, voting is bordering on pointless. Labour have moved so far to the right that the Tories are now fighting them on green issues and civil liberties – in other words, they have almost had to move to the left of Labour in order to differentiate themselves. It’s ridiculous. How the fuck does choosing between those two sets of snivelling lickspittles constitute any sort of meaningful choice? How does the election of Cameron or Brown make even the tiniest difference to our day-to-day lives? Tony Blair was essentially a Tory prime minister. And given it makes no difference whatsoever, why are we voting?
A vote is supposed to be a choice, a statement of belief and principle, your chance to make a declaration of political allegiance and attempt to influence the way in which the country is governed. Does anyone seriously believe that the current system, which is effectively two-party, offers us a choice in how the country is run? Does it bollocks. The influence of lobbyists, and hence wealth, in politics is so colossal that unless you promise to govern in a particular way, to play the game obediently, then the chances of your name even appearing on the ballot paper are basically nil. As Tony Blair so brazenly demonstrated in the buildup to the war in Iraq, they are absolutely not accountable to us; not in the slightest.
So when we vote, what are we doing, legitimising the status quo? It certainly feels that way. We are basically giving the impression that we genuinely believe that choosing one special interest sock-puppet over another represents a meaingful choice for us and one which we are willing to take seriously. Surely voter turnouts dropping to record-low levels makes more of a political statement than dutifully making an appearance and marking your box like a good little boy. How, after all, can they claim legitimate mandate to govern when a mere twenty percent of the populace endorsed them? They will claim it anyway of course, and blame us, but it feels like a stronger, more meaningful statement than simply choosing one bunch of toadies over another identical bunch of toadies who happen to wear differently-coloured ties.
The problem, really, is the alternative. If you refuse to vote, which I think it a perfectly reasonable decision and one with which I am seriously toying at the moment, then how do you remain politically active? I guess you join activist groups, participate in message boards and sites that debate political issues, and generally cherry-pick your participation in terms of single issues rather than sign up to any one morally bankrupt political party or another. It’s politics by aggregate rather than partisan allegiance, which seems dead in the water at the moment. Here anyway. Look at The States and partisan tribalism has more or less engulfed the political process, and why? I guess because they genuinely feel that picking Obama or McCain or, until recently, Clinton over the others will produce genuinely difficult outcomes for the country.
Over here, does anyone seriously believe Cameron, Blair, Brown or any of these twits are significantly different from one another? The great success of the Scottish National Party this year has been their mediocre inoffensiveness, allowing them to play the nationalist card, which in much of Scotland translates as borderline racism, and thus mobilise the bovine masses without seriously threatening to do anything meaningful which might upset anyone. Or, more significantly, make them give a shit one way or another.
So what are we left with? I am increasingly finding myself in a situation where I can barely justify voting. I would rather a pathetically low turnout, as political statements go, to pottering along voting for this or that identikit besuited mannequin and continuing to give the impression that they are actually doing their jobs. They are not. We are not being listened to. Our votes are fucking meaningless. And what can we do, spoil the ballot? Maybe. Not vote? I don’t know. I wouldn’t be happy with that at all, it just doesn’t feel right, and of course it is impossible to differentiate between the indifferent non-voter and the pointed non-voter. So it may be difficult to make a statement that way, but it is very close to being the only real statement we can make as an electorate. Is this too disillusioned for a Friday? Sorry. Have some gin and forget I ever said this.
Fela Kuti – Government Chicken Boy
Billy Bragg – NPWA
Radiohead – Electioneering
You could always put yourself down as a Jedi.
Oh, hang on. That was the census.
I think we should start demanding a ‘fuck off, you’re all corrupt, lying, backsliding bastards who would swap your first child for a smidgin of favour’ box so everyone could tick it.
There is.
You go in and destroy your ballot. I believe the government has to count destroyed ballots still.
Basically it’s designed to distinguish people who are apathetic, and people who are democratically active, but still pissed of. Not that it does much of the sort, but the road to third party anonymity is paved with good intentions and all that…
Also Toad, shame on you for not putting “Young enough to be all pissed off, but I’m old enough to be jaded”. Sort of the musical version of your post. Now I’m off to read the cheery post above this and then go for crab and chips at ‘The Barking Crab’, because it’s summer.
Well, wasn’t it that fat, drunken cigar-chomper Churchill who said that democracy is the worst form of government…except for all the others that have ever been invented? It’s true of course. Human beings are just natural dipshits, and avarice and greed screw up every institution that man can invent, no matter how noble it may have been at the outset. Except religion, of course. Ahem.
In the history of the US there have been two Presidential elections that truly “mattered,” 1860 and 1932. Other than that it’s pretty much been a game show. Despite this pessimism, I pretty much always vote, and I guess I do so partly out of habit and partly to reassure myself that I’m not as apathetic as everyone else around me. Yes, that’s it. I vote in order to feel superior.
The Barking Crab? Doesn’t SpongeBob work there?
You’re a beacon of integrity to us all, C&B.
I think that the proliferation of chatrooms/phone-ins/messageboards has created the illusion that the individual’s voice really counts. Invariably, we’d all vote for the “Me” Party. To expect any political party to match even closely all the beliefs that we hold is a mistake imo. There’s some people in Zimbabwe just now being killed just so there can be two choices in the ballot box.
I’ll take our handful by comparison.
Well you’re right in one sense for sure – just how much impact can we expect one person’s voice to have anyway, in a country of 60-odd million people. That’s just maths – want to count more, then live somewhere less populous.
I think what I mean is that the decisions on which I want to make my decision are just not represented on the ballot anymore.
The other thing you can do is what you’re doing here – ultimately it is far more important to stand up and shout about stuff, to make a stand yourself and to make people think about the world, than it is to go into a booth and vote. I know I will carry on turning up and doing something with the ballot paper although eventually I may just be left with the energy to spoil it, but I know that I’ll still find somewhere somehow to talk about this stuff and to think about it and maybe, even if it’s just within my immediate peer group or (er, possibly slightly professionally dubiously) with the kids I teach. All of that is more significant and meaningful than just turning up as one vote out of 100,000 in a constituency.
That’s what I am thinking. I am on the verge of abandoning voting altogether and trying to get more involved with local activism on issues I give a shit about. Voting, as I see it, doesn’t really say anything, although I guess spoiling the ballot does make sense.
I just suppose that I wonder how low the turnout would have to become before the cunts admit that they are the problem.
Mathew, you are so, so wrong. It is this apathetic attitude that has given the politicians the ability to treat us with the contempt that they do, because they know that less than 40% of the population will bother to turn out. We used to live in a country where there was a 2 party state, however a man called Keir Hardie and other like minded individuals changed that position and this could happen again if people got off of there arses and stopped moaning about not being able to do anything.
As for your jibe at the SNP and their “borderline racism”, i live in the west of Scotland and all the racist bigots that I know support the unionist parties (no i am not a nationalist but will stand up for them on that).
In Scotland as you must be aware we do not live under a 2 party system anymore and i believe the parliament is the better for that, Labour will have to start treating the electorate with a little bit of respect as the days of putting a red rosette on a monkey and him getting elected are over. The executive did rather upset a lot of people (in Whitehall at least) when they introduced free care for the elderly, no tuition fees for students and cutting the prescription charges.
Coming from a family that contains individuals with political views that cover the whole spectrum and who is proud of the fact that his grandfather was in George Square when the government sent the tanks in it both saddens and angers me that people can be so apathetic.
In the words of Chris Dean “the power is yours”
Drew
Apathetic, are you fucking joking? Christ, I’ll reply tomorrow when I’m sober, but apathetic? Read, man, just fucking read.
“I am increasingly finding myself in a situation where I can barely justify voting. I would rather a pathetically low turnout, as political statements go, to pottering along voting for this or that identikit besuited mannequin and continuing to give the impression that they are actually doing their jobs.” – this is hardly a call to action or am i not fucking reading correctly?
No, you aren’t. I am not saying that caring about politics is stupid, nor getting involved, nor thinking about it, nor participating. I am just seriously wondering whether or not casting a vote counts as ‘participating’ or whether it is just pointless pantomime and if you really care about how the country functions then there might be better, more effective ways to do it. That’s not apathy by any measure.
In all seriousness, I do not think that casting a vote is “just pointless pantomime.” Viewed in historical perspective it is in fact a pretty remarkable thing that people now have the power of selection at their command, that they have a “choice,” at least in some respect. The problem I think is not with voting, but with the attitude that voting is enough, standing alone, to make a “democracy.” In nations with large populations it is simply implausible to envision a truly “democratic” election, with hundreds of candidates representing hundreds of different governing philosophies slugging it out; that sort of thing results in governments being elected with such a minimal mandate that they are left essentially impotent. And while impotence of that kind can sometimes be a good thing, it is just as often disastrous.
I suspect that in both the States and the UK the problem is that most people simply cast their vote on election day without having exerted any effort before the election to ensure that suitable candidates are on the ballot. Wealthy corporations (and, to a lesser extent in the States, labor unions) hire people whose only job is to exert such effort to make sure that the names on the ballot are “their” people. These institutional voters and the people they help elect are well aware that for most “normal” people the opportunity costs of this kind of pre-election activism are simply too high; people have jobs to do and children to raise, and they can’t be spending all their time organizing themselves politically and seeking out candidates. As a result, except in times of true crisis where public opinion becomes energized in an unusual way, the names that wind up on the ballot are not the names that most of would wish. The only solution, as Matthew suggests I think, it for those of us who live in countries with “representative” systems to make pre-election activism a much more signifgicant priority in our lives than it is today. Perhaps some of us should even run for office, eh?
“The most revolutionary thing one can do always is to proclaim loudly what is happening” – Rosa Luxembourg.
I knew I’d read this quote somewhere recently but it’s taken me until now to track it down and get it right.
There is that ‘run for office’ thing as well – if you don’t like any of the rest of them do it yourself. Except for that to mean anything beyond tokenism the system means that you either have to ‘do it yourself’ as a party insider (which takes years of backscrubbing and stabbing) or as a representative of a single issue campaign (and astonishingly there are a couple of those in the UK parliament), but getting there means doing all of the local activism stuff first obviously.
Just keep shouting.
Having seen politicians in action quite a lot, I’m always surprised by how much they do care. How much they start out wanting to get things done and to make a difference. It would be hard to argue that the election of Thatcher in 79 didn’t make a difference to where the UK ended up by the mid-90s. And the Labour politicians of 97 came with ideas about changes that they wanted to make. They did achieve some: minimum wage, child poverty, more money for schools and hospitals. And they do work surprisingly long hours. But the endless grind of 16 hour days takes its toll and they lose the initial clarity of purpose. and become us4ed to being in power, taking it for granted.
Yes, they are assailed at all turns by a range of special interests and by lobbyists of all hues. And they struggle with the irreconcilablity of what they want to ahcieve, how they will fund it and that people want more and more for less and less. And globilisation means that corproate tax revenues are declining and they don’t know how to fund the gap.
But Ctel, would you argue that there was much qualitative difference between current Labour and Tory camps? It just doesn’t seem to represent a choice – there’s barely a difference to be noted. As I said, I suppose this is why the Americans are so much more galvanised over their own election at the moment – it actually does seem to represent a genuine choice.