Tomorrow is the 2015 General Election and soon all of these ‘let me explains’ and ‘if you let me finishes’ will come to an end. But before all of that is over, should you vote or give it a miss? I’m one of those people who is always trying to force all of her friends to vote, so here I will give you a rundown on why I think you should spend those mere minutes it takes to vote on actually voting.
Problem: I don’t even know who they are or what’s happening!
The General Election happens every five years and it’s when we decide which political party will run the country. Each party has their own leader, and that leader becomes the prime minister if their party wins. When you go to vote, you vote for a local MP for your constituency (or local area) representing his or her party and that counts towards the national wins of that party. For example, you might vote for a local Labour candidate and, if that Labour candidate wins, their points are added to the Labour party points to see whether or not the country wants them in charge. This is the gist of what we’re doing tomorrow in it’s simplest form. It’s actually a little bit more complicated than that, but we’ll get into that later.
Your vote can help decide which party will run the country, which means you’ll help decide where your tax money is spent. These policies ultimately affect almost every single part of living! Including dying!
Problem: I don’t know what their policies are and I don’t have time to go through their manifestos!
You’re in luck: There are plenty of websites that will tell you who you agree with, and all you have to do is spend a few minutes answering questions - like one of those quizzes you share with your buddies when you’re supposed to be working.
Verto, aka the political version of tinder, and Who Should You Vote For? are both pretty simple, while I Side With and Vote Match both let you choose how important each topic is to you - as does Vote For Policies which is possibly the most accurate, and almost certainly the most lengthy.
Give some of them a crack and see how you end up. You might be surprised!
This one might also help with…
Problem: They’re all the same!
Yes, it seems as if the Conservatives and Labour have been drifting ever closer as each year passes, and some people will tell you that these two parties are the only ones worth voting for because they’re the only ones that have a chance of winning (thanks to First Past the Post - again, we’ll get onto that later) but that’s not strictly true. Last election, there was a surge in support for the Liberal Democrats which landed us with the coalition we’ve been living with for the past 5 years. This was the first full coalition since World War II, and this year isn’t looking any less unsure. It might not seem like much, but this is one of the most exciting elections in recent memory because we just don’t know how it’s going to go. The last couple of years have seen crazy things happen like the Scottish Referendum for Independence, and a real growth in members for smaller parties. Nationally, Lib Dem membership has sunk while the Green Party and UKIP have lurched ahead. And while the latter has seem to have plateaued, the Greens have only seen growth, with an increase of nearly 300% between March 2014 and March 2015. So, while the Tories or Labour are still going to be heading the ship, they’re not going to be sailing alone. It’s very unlikely either of the big parties are going to have a majority government, so they’ll need to put together a coalition, and that should mean a voice for the smaller parties who generally have slightly more radical policies than the big two - and hopefully the quizzes above will have illustrated that even they have their differences.
Problem: Our system is broken First Past the Post makes voting practically pointless
Yep, First Past the Post is rubbish; I totally agree. But when we wanted to change it a few years ago, hardly anyone came out to do anything about it! A lot of this was down to misinformation from the parties who didn’t want a fairer system, and who often went out of their way to try and make the whole thing has confusing as possible, but a lot of it was also down to voter apathy.
First Past the Post is the voting system that we use in the UK, and it means that candidates do not need to achieve the majority of votes to win their constituency. A candidate could win a seat with only 35% of the vote - and if a party wins at least 50% of the seats available, then they get to run the country. The system tends to exaggerate the support of popular parties while undermining the support of less popular parties, meaning bigger parties are represented better than they should be and smaller parties are represented worse than they should be. It tends to be quicker and simpler than other voting systems like Alternative Vote or Proportional Representation but many argue that it is undemocratic because people’s votes aren’t accurately represented.
This system is why people talk about ‘tactical’ voting - using your vote just to block out whichever of the two big parties you hate the most. This year saw the launch of VoteSwap - a website which lets you tactically swap your vote with people across the country to make sure that the Tories don’t stay in power after this election.
In some ways this problem is the biggest when trying to get people to vote. In this system, voter apathy is an inevitability and that’s a shame…
Problem: They don’t represent me!
…But you know who always turn out to vote in big numbers? The middleaged and over 50s. In the last general election the average turnout for 45+ was about 73%. The 18–24 turnout was only 44%. In fact, in 2010, only 39% of young women voted. Compare those turnouts to policy and it’ll start to make sense why British politics tend to lean towards benefiting the older generations, while punishing the younger folks. Our politicians reward those who turn out by focusing on their needs, because they are the people who will decide whether they get to stick around or not. Represent your demographic, and you’ll start to see your interests represented.
Problem: I live in a safe-seat!
If your constituency is a ‘safe-seat’ this means that is very likely going to be held onto by the party who has it at the moment. These happen mostly because of the First Past the Post system described above, and are kind of a bother because (nationally) political parties trying to win the vote have no real interest in areas that they’re already certain they will win or lose.
However, there are a couple of reasons to still bother voting even in a socalled safe-seat. One is that if your area has been pretty politically active lately, we might all be surprised by a turn-around in the result. It could happen! Crewe & Nantwich was safely Labour for 25 years before flipping over to the Tories in 2008.
Another reason (based on a more realistic outcome) is to let your representative know which way you lean, so they know which way to lean. If your constituency is a Labour safe-seat but they get a high number of UKIP voters, your representative is going to lean more towards UKIP policies and attitudes if only so he or she keeps in your good-books!
So why not get involved? It’ll only take a few minutes and you can feel like you’ve done the best you can for the country you want - you’ll feel legitimised every time you complain about anything in this country ever again! And that’s a pretty satisfying feeling. Anyway, a lot of you get the day off anyway so you might as well.
Find me on twitter! @pixiegigs