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A hundred years ago women did not have the right to vote except for a tiny handful of enlightened places, notably New Zealand. The right to vote was fought for by courageous women, and men, prepared to do whatever it took to win the right for women to participate in the democratic process.
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A classic tactic for the suffragettes was the non-violent protest that involved chaining themselves to railings and forcing the police to arrest them and the courts to punish them. This resulted in publicity for the cause and it made out that the state was oppressing women in a very direct way. This was a bit of a pantomime. The police did not want to oppress them, or arrest them, but were forced into the confrontation. |
How can you live with yourself if you don't vote? People have fought and died for the right to vote. It is important, it is the basis of our free societies.
What would happen if nobody voted?
It will not happen. As long as there is an election the candidate who wins the majority of the votes cast will win, no matter how small the turnout. Even if nobody voted there would still be a government. If nobody chooses who forms the government then somebody will simply seize power. It is very unlikely that such a thing will ever happen in reality. Democracies do not spontaneously mutate into free societies without government or coercion, only in daydreams. The real world is one in which governments grow in power and influence unless checked by democratic pressures to resist such unplanned growth. Government will grow like a cancer if unchecked, it is therefore vitally important that people who care about how government should be checked get involved in the process.
I believe that government is a good thing, in moderation. There are things that only a government should do (like raise armies and police), there are things that are better done by universal communal action, even if some mild compulsion is required (such as social insurance, pensions, health provision etc.) and there are some things that a community needs that are more effectively provided by a monopoly, which needs to be run in the interests of all. However there are things that a government could do but are better done by other bodies, or none. Such questions will always arise and the answers will not be the same for all-time, democratic politics is essential. And if you do not vote how can you expect things to go the way you want? If you do not vote you leave the way clear for the rich to vote for no taxes for anything except police and armed forces and none of those laws that stop them sending boys up chimneys or turning wilderness into industrial wasteland, or those who vote to keep up your taxes to pay their welfare payments or those who vote for their job, whether that is in a hospital, a school, a nuclear submarine building yard or an inspectorate of widgets.
It is your vote, use it.
Supervote
The current model of democracy is less effective than it could be. Many people feel that their vote has no meaning whatsoever.
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1997 result in Cheadle |
Here is the result in my parliamentary constituency in the 1997 election. It quite clearly shows that for me to vote Labour in 2001 would have been a tactical mistake, as this would have made it more likely that the Conservative MP would retain his seat. Which would have been, in my opinion, the worst outcome.
To make a real anti-Tory statement the best thing I could do is vote Liberal Democrat. So I did.
One little blob that used to be blue has now turned orange! But only just, a majority of 33, which makes me feel so much better, my vote really was valuable. If only all voters could always feel that way.
Notice how all the small (geographically) constituencies seem to be red, Labour support is concentrated in the urban areas. The blue Tory areas are the rural and affluent suburban areas, large area, but few of 'em. Liberal Democrat (orange) seats are scattered in rural and urban areas, the fairly even spread of support for the Liberal Democrats in all areas conspires to reduce their representation so that since W.W.II they have always had a lower proportion of seats than their popular vote. That is why Proportional Representation is so popular among Liberal Democrats.
It should not be necessary for people to vote tactically, possibly for a candidate that they do not like, simply in order to keep out a greater evil. There is a voting system available that will allow every vote to have an impact and to allow everybody to vote for what they actually want. Not surprisingly such a powerful voting system is a little more complicated than the simple winner-takes-all system, however the price in complexity is very small compared to the multitude of advantages.
The Single Transferable Vote system was devised in England by a lawyer named Thomas Hare in that most auspicious year, 1859. As the name suggests each voter has a single vote which is transferable. The vote is transferred from candidate to candidate until it does make a difference. Every vote counts.
The system is based around multi-member constituencies. Instead of every constituency electing a single member the constituencies are made larger and they elect several. There is no requirement for the constituencies to be all the same size, some can elect four members, some six, thus allowing more natural sized units rather than arbitrary divisions to keep the numbers fair. As an example consider Connecticut, which (at least when I was there in 1984) elected 6 members to the House of Representatives. This is obviously a reasonable political unit to elect six Representatives in a multi-member constituency. Rather than being alienated by the idea of there being a single member representing an arbitrary slice of their state they could feel empowered knowing that there were six members for their state, who could represent a much wider swathe of opinion.
In a six-member constituency it should be obvious that to be elected a candidate needs a minimum of one sixth of the vote cast, that is the quota. Each elector would be offered a choice of many candidates, the main parties would probably each slate as many candidates as there are seats available, smaller parties would slate at least one more candidate than they could hope to get elected. Some independents could also stand, and have a realistic chance. The elector would rank the candidates in order of preference, expressing as many preferences as they want between all the candidates on the list. The voter can choose which party to vote for and which candidate to prefer within each party, there is no limit to how those preferences are expressed or to how methodical or arbitrary they are. The magic happens at the count.
Firstly all the votes are counted, unsorted. This total number of votes cast is used to determine the quota. Then the votes are sorted by first preference. If any candidate has more votes than the target quota they are immediately declared elected and any surplus votes beyond the quota are redistributed according to their second preference. This redistribution then may trigger further candidates to pass the quota. This process of redistributing surplus winning votes continues until it yields no more elected candidates. Then the lowest scoring candidate has their unsuccessful first preferences redistributed according to their second preferences (or lower preferences if that candidate has already been elected or eliminated). These processes of redistributing surplus winning and losing votes continue until there are six candidates who have reached the quota. When that occurs everybody can see that every vote has been used, every vote has made a difference, every vote has elected a candidate according to a freely expressed preference, a supervote indeed.
It could never work? Well it does, in many places, notably the Republic of Ireland.
Some people say that any form of proportional representation is bad because it leads to weak coalition governments. Nonsense. Weak indecisive populations lead to coalition governments. If 25% want party X, 32% want party Y, 31% want party Z and the rest can't make up their minds how can it be fair for any party to win a commanding majority in parliament? Under a proportional representation system you can easily get a strong government, you just make sure that more than half the people vote for one particular party. If people want strong one party government any proportional system will let them have it, and if they don't vote for it why should they be made to have it? In order to form a government from a parliament a majority in the parliament has to be achieved, surely it is better that this mirrors the distribution of opinion outside the parliament?
The first past the post electoral system is quite capable of massive injustice. Imagine if opinion were evenly divided in all constituencies, the same party would win all the seats despite there being substantial opposition everywhere, would that be fair? Just imagine if everybody voted on gender lines, women slightly outnumber men in every constituency, no men elected. Or imagine if there is a very commonly held minority view that is nowhere absent, and nowhere a majority, it is never represented in parliament, that is why there are no socialists in the US congress despite there being socialists in every state. In contrast small minorities can get elected if they have concentrated support in a small area. Many times electoral systems based on simple majority voting in constituencies have resulted in perverse results in which parties are elected with parliamentary majorities despite polling fewer votes than their rival parties. These effects can be magnified by gerrymandering, the practice of drawing up boundaries that concentrate your opposition votes in a few strongholds with huge numbers of wasted surplus votes while securing small majorities for your party in many more areas. The natural tendency of people to live in neighbourhoods full of people like themselves makes unintentional gerrymandering effects difficult to avoid. How much more sensible to draw up larger natural boundaries and then suit the number of representatives to match the size of the area to be represented?
Pragmatically there is a lot to be said for a limited level of proportionality in an electoral system. The worst electoral systems are to be found in countries that have too much proportionality, especially in countries that use a national list system, such as Israel. Under such a system tiny minorities can find themselves brokering power. Parties that represent less than 2% of the opinion of the electorate can have a deciding voice if the sums fall that way. The Supervote system does not allow this to happen. To get elected a minority candidate has to get a reasonable number of votes in a particular area. For example, imagine the largest constituency elected as many as nine members, which is probably beyond the optimum level, this would require a candidate to receive some degree of endorsement from more than 11% of one particular community. It is unlikely that many rabid genocidal racists or feminists who want to put all men into protective custody would be elected.
The Single Transferable Vote system allows that all significant minorities are represented, but excludes the very small minorities who can have a tendency to have weird or extreme policies. But this effect is based on the level of support, not on the nature of the ideas, there is nothing to stop small minorities gaining popular support if they engage in mainstream politics, and certainly the fact that the electoral threshold stands at say 11% of the vote rather than having to obtain a majority in any constituency will allow any party to make a serious bid for representation, to act as a base camp for building larger support. In addition a voter cannot waste a vote by voting for a minority candidate, if the minority candidate is eliminated that vote will be transfered, so a more mainstream alternative, but still chosen by the voter, would receive the benefit of the vote while the vote for the minority candidate is still registered and can be used as propaganda ammunition for later campaigns.
The single transferable vote system allows voters to express their real preferences and to do so beyond the simple choice of one party or another. Take for example my father. He lives in the constituency that used to elect that most nauseating toad Neil Hamilton. What choice did he have? He wanted to vote for an honourable and pragmatic Tory but he didn't have that option. In a safe Tory seat he had no choice at all. Imagine instead he was voting in a much bigger constituency, perhaps half the county of Cheshire, he would then have been free to vote for Nicholas Winterton as his first choice, a man he thoroughly admired, and then express his opinions on several other Tory candidates and then move on to Liberal and Labour candidates and leave the toad off all together. Like most people his preferences would not be limited entirely to party lines or lists. The Single Transferable Vote system empowers the voter.
Another way the voter is empowered is by being allowed to express their own prejudices, not have them expressed by others on their behalf. Many times parties will be wary of selecting a particular candidate because they fear the electorate might be prejudiced. Few women are selected, few ethnic minorities, few gays, few people who are open about their attitude to drugs. But under a supervote system the “selectorate” need not worry about such prejudices. In a six member seat they can select six candidates and let the electorate choose. If the electorate want gifted outspoken gays they will get them, if they want a competent parliamentarian who is open about her attitude to cannabis use they will vote for her. If they are narrow-minded they can opt for the safe but dull option, their choice, their vote. But if the party want to restrict the choice of the electorate they can do that, slating only as many candidates as the opinion polls suggest is a plausible target, or selecting six clones with no distinguishing views or attributes, and if they do that the voters will see their true Stalinist colours.
The single transferable vote system is the fairest and best way of electing the members of any representative assembly. It is a cause worth fighting for.
My stand
Me, posing where I was arrested for chaining myself to the railings, outside the Houses of Parliament, twenty years before. |
Following in the footsteps of the Suffragettes I too made a statement about the state of British democracy and the lack of proportionality in the electoral system by chaining myself to the railings outside The House of Commons when the house first sat after the 1983 General Election. For me it was little more than a stunt, simply making a point in front of TV cameras. I have a right to make my voice heard, even if imperfectly. My admiration for those who fought for democracy for real is enormous and my contempt for those that abuse their right by not bothering to vote is almost as great. |
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This page is dedicated to the memory of martyrs for democracy in all nations. |
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