June 10, 2004
Democracy
So, I've been to perform my electoral duty: five crisp
Xs inscribed, forms slipped anonymously into two separate ballot boxes. Voting is one of those things that you can't help but feel grown-up doing: exercising your rights as a citizen, having your say, making yourself heard. OK, perhaps not
heard.
Back in my youth, the sort of studenty anarchists who are no doubt now pillars of the political establishment used to say:
If voting changed anything, they'd abolish it.
During the Thatcher years there was never any doubt who "they" were.
It's possible there was some local election earlier for which I was eligible, but the first time I can remember voting was in the 1987 general election. I was in a safe Labour seat, and the Tories were in no danger of defeat, so my vote was doubly irrelevant, but in a sense that didn't matter. It had to be done, and it was exciting to be doing it.
I remember watching the TV coverage late into the night, results dribbling in one by one, no-one in any doubt about the outcome. The Spitting Image election special finished with a jack-booted Maggie ("Third term! Third Reich!") leading her party in a chorus of Tomorrow Belongs to Me: bitterly funny and depressing beyond words.
Five years later, Maggie was gone, the Tories were obviously corrupt and riven with dissent, the soapbox-toting John Major looked feeble and vulnerable. I was still in a safe Labour seat, my vote still irrelevant, but I went to the polling booth with a spring in my step. After thirteen years of hateful, heartless Conservative misrule, a new era was about to dawn.
Or not.
That election night was even more depressing than the one before. Would nothing unseat these fuckers? They seemed indestructible. From Basildon to Huntingdon to Smith Square and the door of Number 10 it was one long parade of snarling, slavering triumphalism, manifest destiny, a slow decline into despair.
Five more years.
Today's elections are closer to low comedy than high drama, despite the irksome presence on the ballot of far-right nutters from the BNP. For me, at least, there is no sense of righteous crusade, just a general civic duty, done soberly, like an adult.
Of course, I'll be changing my tune rather sharpish should Shagger Norris be Mayor of London this time tomorrow.
Posted by matt at June 10, 2004 04:44 PM
Oh, I remember election night 1992... profoundly depressing.
It was a Thursday, so I went to the pub as usual. Then I came home and sat down in front of the telly to watch the expected Labour win. Once it was obvious what the result was going to be I went to bed and had horrible nightmares that the Tories had won, and I was _so_ miserable when I woke up in the morning and remembered that it was true.
Not that I've voted very often - too many safe seats for one party or the other. Even when I voted in 1997 my vote was (objectively speaking) wasted: I lived in the safest Tory constituency in Britain.
And now I _can't_ vote - no home constituency in Britain, and disenfranchised in the US. Annoying, particularly since it might actually help for once what with Oregon being considered a "battleground" state.
Gah.
Perhaps it was a futile gesture, but my futile gesture was to pointedly not vote.
I reached my majority last year, and this year happened to be an election year. I went through the tedium of registering and then simply not voting.
There was simply no one worth voting for.
[ksquare] I'm going to quote, without permission and perhaps unethically, someone with whom I recently had a minor spat in another online forum, a chap who goes by the handle "Rosie". I think he hits the nail square on the head here:
"They may well be a bunch of useless loonies, or worse. That's politicians for you. But they're not all equally vile, and one of them is going to get in. So vote for the one you despise least. That's the system. Don't for one moment delude yourself that a politician elected on a low turnout will think that his or her mandate is in any way diminished."
Democracy is a problematic business, certainly, but it doesn't get any less so if you abdicate responsibility for what it brings about. If you don't participate, you get what you deserve; if you do, you most likely get what you don't deserve, which isn't much better, but it's something to hold onto.
If the choice is the lesser of two evils - perhaps it's best for the others to choose the lesser. My own opinions on the matter lean towards I'd rather not be held responsible if the idiot gets elected - of course, you have to understand the unique situation in my country: The same party has been in power since the country's independence (47 years ago), so my vote is pretty much as futile as my gesture.
But frankly speaking, the people in power are a LOT more progressive than the alternatives (religious right and fundamentalist islamists) - so not voting as I didn't approve of most of the current power's policies but didn't want to vote for an idiot either was probably the wiser of decisions.
Belgium presents some very surreal twists on the whole experience.
Voting is compulsory for all Belgians, but I, as a European resident, registered voluntarily to be on the electoral register, thereby making my voting in the European elections mandatory from that moment on.
Still with me? Good.
Three different language communities voted for two separate lists of candidates (one for Flanders and Brussels, the other for Wallonia) and in Flanders the far-right Vlaams Blok scored more than a quarter of the popular vote. This is the twelfth election in which their score has grown. Next time around, they may end up forming the government, which may lead to my arriving back in the UK rather earlier than planned!
