I live in one of those constituencies where one party has a very safe seat with an extremely comfortable majority, so unless that party just happens to be the one I wish to vote for, I could sit here and say my vote is pointless or ‘wasted’ should I want change. Indeed, if this party is my party, I don’t actually need to vote and can be pretty sure they’ll still be there in the morning.
Now. You’ll notice I’ve not said which party controls my area, nor have I said whether I’m for or against them. I may even be quite indifferent.
My ‘silence’ is because I really do believe that how a person votes is private. My random witterings over time may or may not demonstrate which party I currently vote for, or, at the very least, which parties I don’t vote for, but to say it in public when that is not who I am (as in, I’m not a party political animal) seems to me to be an invasion of my privacy. Foolish? Maybe.
However, the point I’m trying to make is that regardless of the apparently pointless nature of my vote in an area with an extremely safe seat, I will still vote today.
I will vote because I believe it is my duty. There may be better or fairer systems that would give more importance to my vote, but we have the system we have and it would be wrong for me to not vote because I don’t like the current way it all works.
In a strange and somewhat delusional way I vote because I actually feel I am part of something. If I don’t vote and slump into apathy then how can that be good for the country in which I live or for me and my family? It means I don’t care, when I know I do passionately care. If nobody cared then what a terrible chaotic place this would finally become.
A first time voter recently asked me for advice, including asking who I would vote for and why. This first timer has no interest in politics, and no real idea of which party represented what. In fact, they’re actually quite apathetic really. It would have been easier for me to spout off my twenty minute rant on why all over parties were in league with the devil, and why everybody should vote the way I will be today because it makes the most sense. I’m sure my persuasive argument could have sent them toddling off to the polling booth to cast their vote for my choice. However, I didn’t do that.
Instead, I spoke as objectively as I could about the three main parties and a little about the smaller and fringe parties, and said they should pick the one that seemed to be saying stuff that most resonated with their life and age and interests and beliefs. I also explained my belief that voting was in its own way an exciting part of a process, and also that it was, if a person wanted it to be, a private affair. My only non-objective comments revolved around me being adamant that people should be part of the process and should bother to vote.
I felt quite proud of myself for my objectivity and for the things I’d said and the first time voter walked away confirming they would vote and were looking forward to being part of the bigger process, yet were still in confusion about who to vote for.
It would have been easy for me to wield my influence, making the decision for them, and, since they are fundamentally apolitical and apathetic, they would have just gone and voted in whichever way I had told them. That would have been wrong.
Over the decades I’ve heard so many saying why they would be voting X or voting Y. Rarely was this related to the policies of X or Y. I recall a union rep telling a confused new voter that she should vote Labour because she wasn’t allowed to vote anything else because she was in a union. Erm, no! It’s your vote not your union’s vote. I recall “We’ve always been Conservatives, my father and his father before, so I’ve got to vote Conservative.” Erm, no! It’s your vote not your father’s vote.
So many vote for a specific party for the wrong reasons. It can even be in an X-Factor/Britain’s Got Talent way because the candidate looks nice, or youthful or handsome, or has a lovely smile, beautiful eyes, and has nothing to do with policies or what the person represents. But at least they are voting.
Even if they are voting for misguided reasons, they are voting and are being part of the democratic process, and that’s got to be a good thing.
Today I’m not like one of the newspapers with a splash telling you who to vote for, but I am asking you to go and vote. It’s not the best system in the world, but it works. Please be part of it.
England's England 