UK Election - Polling Day

[purpletigron]

Last night, I dreamed of naturally patterned black, white, purple and green suffragette kittens.

For those of us eligible to vote in the UK today ... my feeling is that it's valuable to exercise and preserve the right to vote. This time, if there is a hung parliament, and negotiations, our broken electoral system may finally be improved.

Properly completed postal ballot envelopes can also be delivered to polling stations today.

I feel that not voting actually plays into the hands of the least honest politicians - it reduces the vote against them, and they feel entitled to utterly ignore non-voters.

Comments

[d-h.livejournal.com]

Speaking from a country that has been through electoral reform (and is now actually getting push back from conservative elements) I am (in all optimism and best wishes) hoping you get a hung parliament.

[anthraxia.livejournal.com]

That's the biggest reason why I think Australia has the right idea about compulsory voting, although the name is a misnomer - you don't actually have to vote for anyone, but you do have to be registered and you do have to turn up on voting day to collect your ballot and put it in the box. However, you can return a blank ballot, and it shows up in the statistics as 'non-vote'. We don't have an apathy vote, we do have a 'there is no one who I consider worth voting for' vote. One election in the early 90s, that percentage nearly hit 10% - the pollies went nuts! The concept that nearly one in ten people felt so alienated from the political parties scared the hell out of them.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

I think this is an excellent system. I would add an explicit 'none of the above' box to the ballot paper. It would stop political types from dismissing 'apathetic voters' and start them tackling the realities.