Election
Posted: Wed 4 May, 2005 Filed under: News, Thoughts 4 Comments »I’m not going to write much about the General Election this year. For the first time since I was legally able to vote, I can’t do so this time. I fucked up when I moved, and didn’t register myself in time with the new council. Entirely my own fault, but it’s still weird.
I normally do vote – even though I can’t deny that I think pretty much all politicians are utter twunts. To coin a phrase :
How can you tell when a politician is lying?
Their lips move
But I’m still bloody happy that today is the last day of campaigning before the polls open tomorrow. I’ve had enough of it, and I can see why “voter apathy” is such a problem. People get bored of the entire fucking thing.
I still like the Australian system. Everyone has to vote. But because of that, there’s also a “none of the above” category for when the voters think that all the candidates are shite. I believe that “none of the above” has actually won a couple of elections in the past…
Perhaps rather than a month of campaigning, we should just have a week of it. Short, sharp, and it’d mean that more of the result was based on the perceptions we already had of the various parties. Everyone would have far less opportunity to get pissed off with all the shite talked by politicians, pundits, reporters, and the media in general. It sounds like a plan to me.
A week? Can’t we make it 3 days? :/
Yeah I’m with you. Most of the pre-election talk spanks of mis-direction and points scoring anyway so I usually pay what they SAY little heed. Sure I’ve checked over a couple of manifesto summaries but I already know what the main parties are all about, and made my mind up where my vote was going quite a while ago.
And I’ll second the Australian system. None of the above for Parliament!!
Last thought before I go, whilst I’ve mentioned spoiling your vote here, and whilst I agree with Lyle that there are advantages to making voting mandatory I do won […]
I don’t think you’ll ever change apathy, and I wonder if forced voting would just result in lazy voting?
I also wonder how much of the apathy vote are people not voting because they think it wont make a difference because the opposition is so weak, or because they want to vote for a small party who has no hope? Maybe before enforced voting, a change to the system to proportional voting where every vote counts as much no matter where it is.