h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yes, the important thing is that people can feel that their vote isn't a wasted one! One or two BNP MPs are a price worth paying for that... We have had one or two nutters, but they're not a big problem...

>> ..interesting polls and surveys.. <<

This just in.
A recent survey of those who did not vote in Canada's last general election shows that 64% claim they would vote if they could do it online.

~jwf~

It could be for so much more than General Elections. In the UK they could even do it on the BBC since its our national broadcaster. Imagine: you log on to Hootoo, on the front page is the link to the weekly referendum. You vote to give less money to MPs, then head off to annoy the Thingites. and its such a perfect day...

I can't help but wonder, if so many people are able but unwilling to suffer the physical exertion of a walk to the polling booth, just how much mental exertion they would be prepared to put into voting if they were able to do it during their browsing.

Frankly, I'm scared. I appreciate that, when everyone has the right to vote, everyone has the right to vote without knowledge, understanding or thought, but I'd rather the practice weren't actively encouraged.

Still, I take solace in ~jwf~'s assurance that my 'days of empire will come'.

The problem with online voting, is security, and a paper trail is also a very important thing - if a recount is necessary, there must be the ability to do that...

hmmm, interesting!

This thread has reminded me to dig out the voting papers for the combined european parlimentary and local council election papers from the pile of junk mail ive been ignoring all weekend. I am a younger voter, and intend to vote simply because I feel I should, and because the name BNP appears on both the ballots, and i'm not about to give them any help.

Whilst I do not consider myself a particularly politically aware person, I would not say im ignorant. I have discussions with my friends about political issues, and read threads like this although i am very careful about being influenced by them, i want to make my own decisions. The thing is, i don't really know what any of the parties or candidates stand for, other than peoples different opinions that ive heard. I have never spoken to representatives of any of the parties, there is an idependant candidate standing that i've never even heard of, and the only party to put a leaflet through the door is the BNP (and taking the leaflet at face value i have to say 'yeah they seem ok' !!). The party political broadcasts on the TV are an utter waste of time, (vote for us cos were better than them).

I wonder, then why you are surprised when people don't vote. And is a vote in the hands of someone as ignorant as me potentially dnagerous?? And god help us if we make it available online so any idiot can vote without having to even think about it !!

'And is a vote in the hands of someone as ignorant as me potentially dangerous??'

There are far more ignorant people, alas, and far more passive. You at least are actively thinking about and discussing politics, even if you're not that active (if I read you rightly) in seeking out information.

It's good to see my views on Internet voting being shared; I shall remember you in my days of imperial dominion.

Regarding Party Political Broadcasts, I recall hearing about research that showed that the majority of people watch primarily the broadcasts of parties they already support, so it's not surprising that the parties preach to the converted. The time frame of a Party Political Broadcast doesn't really offer space for subtle and philosophically astute arguments -- but no, doubtless we wouldn't get those even if it did.

We wouldn't get those because we don't really want them. The availability to the general public of in-depth information on what's going on in the body politic is greater than it ever has been, but it's not as if there are tens of millions of us eschewing the soaps to watch BBC Parliament.

more people vote to select reality show winners than for public officials. no wonder paid political announcements look like mtv clips.

substance? substance? we don't need no stinking substance!!

It would be nice to be able to think that those who are voting are those with knowledge, understanding and a tendency to reflect on their decisions, and those who are not voting are those without the knowledge, understanding and reflective tendencies.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure things actually turn out that way.

Incidentally, has anyone noticed the change in title? (A to the first person to tell me where it's quoted from.) I notice nobody appears to disagree enough to change it back.

If not -- you are victims of subliminal (or rather, not consciously noticed) messages from the power-mongering elite.

RFJS, perhaps it hasn't been changed because it's a truism and not a pejorative statement except from an orthodox religious standpoint. I've not seen it used as a quote before, but I suspect it's related to something biblical such as the Sermon on the Mount or Bealzebub, which imply decomposition is not a good thing.

Regarding informed, knowledgeable voting, I'm wondering if this universal suffrage business is all it's cracked up to be. Nowadays you need to demonstrate some sort of proficiency to do almost anything else that can have a significant impact on others' lives, so why not so with voting?

'I've not seen it used as a quote before, but I suspect it's related to something biblical such as the Sermon on the Mount or Bealzebub, which imply decomposition is not a good thing.'

I'm afraid its source is nowhere near as elevated; although if I didn't know where it's from I'd say that was a good guess (and a very interesting one).

As for whether it's a truism -- belief in 'progress' isn't that uncommon, is it? Not that belief in decline isn't also common. If you take it to refer to the decomposition of organic matter, then presumably it's a truism only insofar as it refers to organic matter -- and some of the matter in the world is inorganic.

The problem with the proficiency test is that it would transfer power over the demos from the demos itself to whoever was running the test. Florida appears to have enough problems with simply purging felons from its voting lists.

Just in case anyone actually is flicking through s of quotations in the quest for , I'd better point out that the source is (a) obscure and (b) not exactly conventional. So unless your tastes happen to resemble mine (hint, hint), it's not worth worrying about. I was actually rather surprised by the reaction I got, although on reflection the suggestion does make sense.

I was thinking more of entropy than just organic decomposition.

Belief in progress is fairly common now, at least in our part of the world, but I doubt it was always thus - it's certainly a concept that's been actively discouraged throughout most of world history. If the idea had been widespread longer then Communism would have got off the ground several millenia ago.

The road to some sort of electoral fitness test is admittedly fraught with difficulties and while I'm in favour of it in principle, I'd be almost certainly opposed to any actual implementation of it. That being said, it might be viable, or at any rate, the problems which it presents at first glance may be surmountable. In the case of the issue you cite, for example, it's already the case that many people do not have a right to vote, and imposing some sort of test might actually increase the number of people eligible to vote thereby transferring power to the demos.

Hey RFJS, Are you trying to proposition me in the ancient kinatawowi tongue??? my mother warned me about people like you.....

Seriously, you are right in that i do not activley seek information, but if I knew a place where I could easily get access to that sort of information i would. This to me is part of the problem, I was not really taught politics at school, and the papers are accessible but often (i am told) biased. Books are probably not up to date enough with current issues, so that leaves the internet. Can anyone recommend any sites which might compare the manifestos of various parties? Also how do you get answers to questions like 'what would you do about Iraq?' and 'what the heck is the european constitution anyway and how will it effect me?' I could contact each representative and ask them in person, but i have better things to do with my time (like working to pay my extortionate taxes )
Basically I want to make an informed vote but feel that getting the right information is quite a hassle. This must put alot of people, young and old, off the whole idea of voting!

So the one post that contains the mystery quotation in its original language has been found -- but it isn't 'kinatawowi', and 'This world is rotting!' isn't a phrase that strikes me as an obvious one to use when propositioning someone, so no .

There's quite a lot of stuff at http://www.epolitix.com/EN/ , but detail can be lacking; pesonally I use it for news rather than analysis.

There are two things you can do about newspaper bias. The first is to read more than one paper, if you can afford more than one, or know people you can swap papers with. (My old secondary school used to make various papers available in the library, and my college makes them available in our equivalent of a common room, so I'm lucky in that respect.) Of course, that does take rather a long time.

The second thing is to read critically; learn to spot unbalanced reporting. Scour the pages for invalid arguments and unsubstantiated assertions and assumptions. (Says the Philosophy student, who's being taught about validity as part of a degree course.)

Read Private Eye (critically, of course). Watching Newsnight is also good if you have time, and access to a television set. (Alas, I may be part of a power-mongering elite in politics, but not in the College T.V. Room.) Radio Four's Any Questions and Any Answers can provide many interesting points of view, and the former sometimes has quite senior politicians on the panel.

Books may date fairly quickly, but having a look at the Politics section of your local bookshops can still be quite interesting, especially since books can provide extended expositions and analysis. They can be useful, and very interestng, where political ideologies and records are concerned; after several years of Blair and a few of Bush, there are quite a few books on both arguing various points of view.

(I wish I'd felt able take more of my own advice recently; revision is an affront to democracy.)

It does look rather a hassle -- and, admittedly, I (a) am a Philosophy student who usually has lots of spare time to spend on honing his powers of analysis, and (b) actually find this stuff intellectually interesting -- but the alternatives could be far worse...

One other thing: look at specialist stuff as well as general political stuff. For example, if the political issue of the moment were censorship and the B.B.F.C., you might want to look, say, at the B.B.F.C.'s own website, at the Melon Farmers' Video Hits for the opposition, and at the Mediawatch-UK site (formerly the National Viewers and Listeners' Association) for the proposition.

(Taking 'proposition' to refer to those in favour of censorship, and 'opposition' to refer to those against.)

Of course, this will only indirectly give you the party political information, but it will help you keep track of the debates informedy.

I always used to base my voting on the party election broadcasts. If you watch them all and listen carefully it's as good as any other method of choosing between parties, better if you're short of time. Hence my vote for the Natural Law party in 1997 - the only broadcast to make sense during the entire run-up to the election, IMHO. These guys are spending shed loads of money to influence your opinion, and they employ experts to do it - let yourself be influenced, just this once. And definitely read Private Eye.

Nowadays I read through all the leaflets which come through the door and assess the candidates that way instead (we don't watch TV much now so tend to miss the election broadcasts). In previous years I've visited the party websites and downloaded entire manifestos, but that's probably getting a bit too keen.

I put a lot of thought into casting my vote but I live in one of the safest Conservative seats in the country, so it's a bit of a wasted effort in some respects. The votes that change our government - the swing, the marginals, whatever - make only a small fraction of the total votes cast. That doesn't make all the other votes unimportant, but it does make it less of a worry (for me) if people vote without thinking about it. At least they're voting, at least they're engaging in our democratic process. And that was the key issue identified right at the start of this thread, that the willingness to engage in our democratic process seems to be diminishing in our society.

People vote on Big Brother, and that's a first past the post system, and most of the votes cast don't affect the final result. But still people, particularly young people, vote on it, paying for the privilege of casting that vote ... even though the final result will have no impact on their own lives at all. It's a mystery.

Mol