Haven’t seen another post for election updates yet, so creating this. Share your bets on how many times Anthony Green is going to have a screen malfunction.
Haven’t seen another post for election updates yet, so creating this. Share your bets on how many times Anthony Green is going to have a screen malfunction.
If Labour take anything from this election its that Starmer should walk into his cabinet room tomorrow/this morning and put all his chips on electoral reform.
Top of the list, ‘soft mandatory’ voting. He’s surely got the numbers in Parliament, he’s already quite unpopular, and he’s probably someone you could trust to deliver electoral reform that represents what the people in a given election want, not skew ot to what a Party wants.
The Conservatives would never do electoral reform, and if they did, theres no-one there that could be technocratic enough to be reliable. So it could be the UK’s best chance in a long time.
Absolutely not. Mandatory voting is great, but the number one two and three thing is voting system reform. They had an IRV referendum a few years back and it failed. Maybe they could take MMP to the people in the future and get more support, and leapfrog is into having an even better system.
But with the rise of Reform over there, I’m not sure they’d want to risk giving smaller parties a path to electoral success.
Na, you need to get the people to the booths, otherwise your always pumping for turnout each election cycle.
Without mandatory voting a dissafected electorate will be more likely to not vote as their message to the politicians in a given election, than send a message by voting. In those circumstances, which the UK is finding itself in a lot! (Brexit included here.) You need to demand the populace make their voices heard.
There is a practical reason, MMP, IRV, whatever you choose are far more complicated to explain than, ‘you must vote, or i’ll hit you over the head with some parsley.’ Mandatory voting is simple to understand, and demands voters become more engaged, which would help with further reform.
Smaller parties have to have a path to success, a party of Government needs to be theoretically possible for them all. Genuine electoral reform would need to account for that, otherwise they’d fail to live up to the demands of democratic governance. But this is why I say as an unpopular technocrat, Starmer could be in a rare position here.
Choice-ranking systems aren’t hard to explain: “put these people in the order you prefer them”.
The anti-AV campaign had Cameron reading out an algorithm for the vote counting process in a dull voice and trying to establish: “yes well I went to Eton and although I am very clever I find this difficult”. The AV referendum failed in large part because it was a LibDem thing and people wanted to give Clegg a shoeing for going back on his election pledges. (That Clegg got outplayed by Cameron tells you everything you need to know about what a useless chancer he is.)
Well, put it this way, whats harder?
Everybody of voting age has to vote.
Or (for example),
Number the candidates in order of most preferred. (Ranked Choice)
I think the first one is simpler to communicate than the second, and in an electoral reform decision like this simplicity of communication is very important.
But thats my point, not that IRV or MMP, et al, are uniquely hard or complicated to understand.
A solution to “people feel disempowered” isn’t “force them to express an opinion”. If turnout is low then give the lie to “my vote doesn’t matter”.
“Forcing” by essentially hitting people on the head with Parsley isn’t exactly the same as the sentiment in your comment.
If people really don’t want to vote in Australia, they don’t vote, theres fines sure, but they’re not big, and i’d be surprised if they chase people for it.
But theres more people than you’d think who never enrolled to vote, thereby never getting a fine, and also never voting. I’s listening to a podcast, i think it was Ben Raue’s, where they demonstrated that the participation rate is actually probably lower than reported due to non-enrolled people not voting. So in percentage terms its maybe high eighties, still good… but… So the rosy picture sold by the media isn’t quite on the money.
This is a consumerist centric view to take. People have self regard for themselves and their immediates above others. I’m not saying some neo-lib greed is good shit, we humans can just find it difficult to see much further past our immediate priorities.
Parties, and Governments aren’t a mall filled with products for casual perusal, they’re a tool we’ve collectively come up with to deliver a greater vision for the tribe’s success in general. But these tools need feedback, and they need energy to function properly.
They only work if theres participation. If people don’t want to bother with that, then they’ll find sooner or later an even less generally amenable decision making system will guide the future of their tribe.
Its the same as the old Bread and Circuses saying, distracting the masses and suppressing their voice makes it easier to seize more control.
I’d say “democratic” rather than “consumerist”; that’s a really odd choice of term (and a poor one I think). I live in a ward that’s solidly single-party in an FPTP system. Whether I vote or not is strictly irrelevant and always will be. There is no incentive for my representative to be anything other than a party cypher.
I’d rather see a PR system in place (STV by preference, but we’d probably end up with AMS so that party sinecures are still possible). For single-seat wards, I’d sooner have ranked-choice, because at the moment people have to thread a needle in order to attempt to stave off the headbanger candidates.
Mandatory voting I’d be less keen on unless it came with a “reopen nominations” but the issue with that is that that option would win by a landslide.
No i meant consumerist.
The carelessly detached mindset that is promoted by my vote doesn’t matter so you give me the lie to it leads to a benign indolence of voters, making them just like shoppers listlessly wandering around a mall, being mildly entertained for a few moments by some trinket.
Also, i want to be clear, I’s clearly stating Mandatory voting as a first step, not an only step. Lots more could be done, someboptions are as you highlight. Lots more can be done is Aus to, we are far from as effective democratically as we could be.
Under FPTP? No, they don’t. Not a realistic one, anyway.
Yeah, agreed. I’s not defending their current system. I’s arguing for political bias to be taken out of a theoretical election reform process as much as possible.