On my way to vote...

Perhaps I'm one of the few, but Euro elections are the ones that get me out to vote...  normally, the nearest I get to voting in UK elections is to go into the booth and write "none of the above" on the voting slip, so 'spoiling my ballot'

But in Euro elections we have proportional representation and my vote (in a safe Conservative constituency) counts for something, normally my vote is utterly wasted, so the most positive thing that I can do is to make a point to the candidates...

But what about the women who campaigned and suffered to get women the vote?  I reply that we have abused their efforts with a political system that means that the votes of only a few thousand actually affect who gets in, where millions are disenfranchised because their votes are taken for granted "they've got nowhere else to go...", so elections are decided on the whims and needs of swing voters, largely middle class, reasonably prosperous... 'pebbledash' people..

I wrote a poem about the way I feel about electoral politics here

But today... I vote GREEN and hope that maybe, just maybe an extra couple of seats might mean that our arguments get to be listened to a little more.  We have not persuaded enough people to be involved in government, but we have earned the right to be heard above the greenwash din of the main, free market blinded parties.

Normal, non-party political service will return to this blog tomorrow! :-)

Comments

[rob culhane Mont Albert Nth, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia]

I came across your blog via someone else's. I live in Australia. We have proportional representation in elections at both the State and Federal level. And just to make sure its fair, each house has a diffe3rent method. The best is in Tasmania where they use the Hare-Clarke system. New Zealand adopted a modified form of it approx 4-5 yrs ago. The reason we have proportional representation was the frustration the colonial gov'ts felt about the British system. I would not claim however, that our system is 'christian'. Australians are not Americans in this regard. cheers, Rob