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Last night, they were talking about voting as I lay in the bath listening drowsily to Radio 4. About the drop in turnout and the plans to revitalise it using postal voting, and possibly text message and online voting in the near future. Before I go on to ramble about my thoughts on this, I've got a poll for you to fill out.
[Poll #216990]
See whenever I listen to one of these pieces there seems to be an underlying assumption that the reason people didn't vote is that it's too difficult for them somehow. They can't cope with dragging themselves all the way to the polling booth. And I'm sure this is true for some people. It's just not true for any of the people I've talked to about their non-voting*. And no-one ever quotes the statistics, making me wonder if there are even any. Perhaps they just don't support the "it's too difficult" thesis.
To cap it all, I'm pretty suspicious of some of the alternative means of voting that have been suggested. There doesn't seem to be any way for me, the voter, to be positive that my phone number has been stripped from any text vote I make for example. At least at the polling booth I can make a visual check that there's no identifying marks on my slip. The same goes for online voting as there will have to be a way to authenticate me as me before I cast my vote - otherwise I could potentially vote several times or vote online and then at the polling booth later. Even postal voting has its risks - after all, I could easily collect and complete Alex's vote before he's woken up enough to notice it - although it is now pretty well established as an alternate means to vote. The risk is of a different nature here though - there's more possibility for electoral fraud, but anonymity is still preserved. The trouble is, no-one gives us the details. Trials of text-message voting and online voting have been postponed for the moment, but it's not an idea that's going to go away, because the politicians will do anything rather than believe that we just don't want any of them.
*If the BBC are allowed to draw sweeping conclusions from vox-pops of about 3 people in the street then so am I, damn it!
[Poll #216990]
See whenever I listen to one of these pieces there seems to be an underlying assumption that the reason people didn't vote is that it's too difficult for them somehow. They can't cope with dragging themselves all the way to the polling booth. And I'm sure this is true for some people. It's just not true for any of the people I've talked to about their non-voting*. And no-one ever quotes the statistics, making me wonder if there are even any. Perhaps they just don't support the "it's too difficult" thesis.
To cap it all, I'm pretty suspicious of some of the alternative means of voting that have been suggested. There doesn't seem to be any way for me, the voter, to be positive that my phone number has been stripped from any text vote I make for example. At least at the polling booth I can make a visual check that there's no identifying marks on my slip. The same goes for online voting as there will have to be a way to authenticate me as me before I cast my vote - otherwise I could potentially vote several times or vote online and then at the polling booth later. Even postal voting has its risks - after all, I could easily collect and complete Alex's vote before he's woken up enough to notice it - although it is now pretty well established as an alternate means to vote. The risk is of a different nature here though - there's more possibility for electoral fraud, but anonymity is still preserved. The trouble is, no-one gives us the details. Trials of text-message voting and online voting have been postponed for the moment, but it's not an idea that's going to go away, because the politicians will do anything rather than believe that we just don't want any of them.
*If the BBC are allowed to draw sweeping conclusions from vox-pops of about 3 people in the street then so am I, damn it!
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no subject
Date: December 8th, 2003 08:31 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: December 8th, 2003 08:45 am (UTC)From:However, if there was a proper RON option - which resulted in nominations reopening if it won, a specific 'abstain' option, no penalty for spoiling one's ballot paper and the right to campaign to encourage others to one of the above three things (seriously - in one country (I think it was Germany) someone was sucessfully prosecuted for encouraging others to spoil their ballots, and even though completing ballots like that was perfectly lawful, it was unlawful for him to encourage others to do so) then I could just about live with it.
no subject
Date: December 19th, 2003 05:51 am (UTC)From:The reason I think it could be a potentially good thing is that it would prevent politicians from hiding behind the excuse that the reason voters didn't turn out is that its too difficult and that they're happy with the status quo. I find it really hard to believe that's true, but theres no way to prove it as things stand.
My tuppence, as SF's mayoral election is in a dead heat
Date: December 8th, 2003 09:13 am (UTC)From:So, for the first time in a long time, I find I really have a choice, and it is difficult to decide. One candidate has all the right political connections, but I am unsure that he'll do anything substantive (moreover his cosmetic ideas may do more harm than good) towards the challenge of chronic homelessness in the city; meanwhile the other candidate has some good idea, but a poor record of action whilst in a victory, is likely to face such strong Democrat opposition as to be rendered utterly ineffective.
So at this moment of greatest choice and importance, I find little choice at all. If I had the hutzpah I might follow the logical conclusion and just as well run myself. ;-)
Re: My tuppence, as SF's mayoral election is in a dead heat
Date: December 19th, 2003 05:52 am (UTC)From:Spoilt ballot papers?
Date: January 5th, 2004 10:12 pm (UTC)From:If, for whatever reason, a person does not like the ballot they have received (in the mail for absentee-voting, for example) or just marked, they can get a new one, with their old one immediately destroyed. There is some additional processing time, though - of course.
If you mean political broadsheets - well, that's at least as old as media-politics itself. ;-)
no subject
Date: December 8th, 2003 10:47 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: December 8th, 2003 03:10 pm (UTC)From:But in the end I go with Ken Livingstone "If voting ever changed anything they'd ban it".
no subject
Date: December 19th, 2003 05:55 am (UTC)From:I think this is one reason why compulsary voting has never been bought in - politicians don't like to think about what they might learn if all those stay at homes came out and made their voices heard, whether for a particular party or against all of them.
Voting reform!
Date: December 9th, 2003 03:00 am (UTC)From:The more people decide they will fail to vote as some sort of vague 'fuck you' to the politicians, the more party-centred the politicians become because only party loyalists bother to vote.
Re: Voting reform!
Date: December 19th, 2003 05:56 am (UTC)From:Which, in a way, is why I'd like to see compulsary voting. It would be a way for those "fuck you" votes to actually be recorded as something and, hopefully, would prevent politics becoming generally more extreme as only people with strong views become interested in politics.
oh joy! a post about my job!
Date: December 9th, 2003 03:40 am (UTC)From:They did trial voting by interactive TV, txt, post and online (both from PCs through a web interface and through voting booths) somewhere in the UK recently -- unfortunately, people liked it, and said it would make them more likely to vote than having to go out to a community hall and vote. I say unfortunately, because it's obviously (no, really!) a bugger to implement.
Apparently one of the things they liked was that people would not see them, not as they voted, but as they were going in to vote. To them, it represented an increase in privacy.
If you're interested in e-democracy issues, the do-wire e-democracy list is the key email update --
http://e-democracy.org/do , and the Hansard Society http://www.hansard-society.org.uk/ are involved in a lot of the UK's research.
Re: oh joy! a post about my job!
Date: December 9th, 2003 04:11 pm (UTC)From:Re: oh joy! a post about my job!
Date: December 19th, 2003 05:59 am (UTC)From:Weird - that never occured to me at all! Perhaps, being a techy, I'm too aware of the data collection possibilities...
I hadn't realised you got this stuff as well - I suppose they're always talking about trying to get young people involved in democracy. Anyway, sorry about reminding you of work in your free time!
voting
Date: December 10th, 2003 05:36 am (UTC)From:I'm not too fond of online or, God beware, email voting; from what I've read so far, it's too insecure. (See, for example, reports about machine voting in America recently and how sure they are that things can't get forged.)
I haven't thought about voting much, probably largely due to the fact that I can't vote in general elections here, either, but I don't think that compulsory voting is going to do much good. I can imagine that it will result in more people voting for fringe candidates.
I'm also not sure whether people find the physical process of casting their vote that difficult; I imagine that most people who don't vote either (a) can't make up their minds about whom to vote for or (b) don't care either way.
Re: voting
Date: December 19th, 2003 06:00 am (UTC)From:I agree entirely, which is one reason that I could support compulsary voting in some form because politicians refuse to admit this. If they had to then it might trigger some fundamental reforms in the way that we conduct politics over here.