Why I didn't vote

Let me first start by saying I fully support the right to vote and if I lived in a country where there was no democracy I would fight for the right to vote.

But nothing is as simple as just vote to change things. For example there are countries in the world that have votes every few years but the government never changes because opposition groups are hidden from the general public. This can be done many ways.

Controlling the media.

Always a popular one no matter how democratic your country is. In the worst case this would be state owned media with only one side to every story and no mention of an alternative view or system. This obviously keeps the population ignorant and hopefully unquestioning off all the facts.

Though full on control off everything is not the only way. There are many more subtle ways in a country with a free and open media. One would be to abuse the knowledge that you have in government to leak information about the opposition while gagging information that might hurt you. Even a subtle change of the national TV station to use your governments party colours can have a surprising effect.

Suppressing the opposition.

Again a popular way of staying in power. In the worst case this would be diapering key figures that start get a popular alternative party going. Along with this can be killing people at meetings and making people scared to talk openly about alternatives.

There are the less violent ways to. Like making it expensive or technically hard to get a party on the ballot card or to easy so there is the government and dozens of alternatives splitting the protest votes. Maybe using laws like prisoners can't vote to lock up ethic groups, tribes or people likely to vote against you in key seats.

Needless to say you can always lie about the vote result or might be able to pay off the opposition party to let you stay in power.

Others.

Welcome to our country. Some governments have stayed in power by issuing passports and offering duel nationality so supporters in neighboring countries can vote.

Misinformation is always good. One day you say someone in the opposition may have done something really bad. Set up a small investigation and some time later release a low key note saying they did not do anything wrong. Most people will remember the crime they were accused off and many will never realise it was false from the start.

Closely linked to the 'We had an inquiry'. It's very easy to have an inquiry, though they may know what the outcome will be before doing any inquiring, if they even bother doing any.

...

So to say democracy is all about the right to vote is so wrong.

Democracy is about the right to change along with the right to a fair government.

So you might be thinking our country is not some small 3rd world despot. Those problems don't exist here.

Well I think your wrong.

There are plenty of examples here in the UK.

Intimidation of anti capitalist groups and meetings, I would not even put it passed our recent governments helping disappear a few people you have never heard off. Though more likely in jail rather than the grave.

WMD. Need I say more about the best use of misinformation by any government. BBC branding is often either red or blue depending on who is in power, especially for news. Then you have the recent AV vote, a perfect chance for the Tories to use their marketing might to get their message across and make the yes campaign look idiots. Then again if they wanted a yes vote and the rest didn't, I'm willing to bet the vote would have been a mirror of what we had.

But there is one thing I really hate about politics which is very unlikely to change. It's the party system.

Here you vote for your MP, whoever wins in whatever area you have been grouped into gets a point for their party. The party with the most points gets to set up as governments and their hand picked leader get to be the countries head, although the party can change that person on a whim.

So if you take politics seriously you are often presented a dilemma.

Do you vote for the countries leader, the party they stand for and their chosen MP for your area?

Do you vote for the party who's ideology best matches your and take their leader and local MP?

Alternatively you vote for the best person to represent your views locally regardless of what party or leader they have.

Now you might be lucky and have three ticks for the same party, local MP and leader. Though there is likely to be a point in your life where you may consider voting tactically to keep out a party or voting for a party or leader you hate because they have by far the best MP for your area.

The media like to over simplify the whole thing but to make a good informed decision means knowing a lot of information. Who are the individual councillors standing in your area, what is their agenda and will they work well with your MP? Who are your local MP choices, what are their agenda both local and national and how much weight do they have in their party or the government? What are the parties likely to do? What type of cabinet is the leader likely select and how will they lead the country if something unexpected happens?

All that has to be put into perspective of how others around you might vote.

They had the cheek to say the alternative vote system was too complex!

The 'AV' vote to me is the classic example of how they have created a system that perfectly pulled the wool over everyones eyes and created a system of limited choice that everyone accepts.

The nation was given the choice of 'first past the post' or the 'alternative vote' or 'first winner of 50% of all votes'. The term alternative instant makes it sound less attractive. Also it made it sound like the only alternative even though the main alternative mentioned for all my life has been 'proportional representation'. If our vote really counted there would have been real choice and debate on all forms of voting systems including..

Dictatorship
Separated local and national management
Communism
Abolishment of local boundaries and voting just for the party
Abolishment of parties and voting for individuals who cooperate to do the best for the country.

You know hours of debate and tv shows on prime time comparing the strengths and weakness of different systems from the really bad to the quite good. We seem quite good at that for choosing who will be in our pop charts or the next fake celebrity.

I would favour the removal of the party system and run the country more like a company. Set up a few hundred key jobs and each five years you vote people into those positions. Obviously with the option to remove really bad performers anytime.

This would free up you local MP just to be your representative on local issues and work as the go between of local government and national government.

A very radical change and would obviously need a lot of debate and would need to be set up right to work.

Though I don't expect much debate of looking at big changes like this being given space in the corporate media even as much as wacky ideas like green issues or zero polluting cars.

With a better system I would pay attention and vote but with the current system I believe all votes are wasted votes for changes between current or alternative with very little difference between them.