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!ukpolitics@lemm.ee appears to have vanished! We can still see cached content from this link, but goodbye I guess! :'(
Tactical vote, stop the Tories!
Check this site or risk splitting the left vote and letting the right wing in.
Doesn't matter get out and vote. Don't know if this article is part of it, but the powers that be want you to feel like there is no reason to go out and vote. There is every reason to get out and vote. Go vote. Do it. Kick the bastards out. I fucking hate starmer but anything is better than the conservatives. Move the Overton window further left. Vote. Vote. Vote.
Move the Overton window further left
That won't happen with Labour.
Quite possibly true, sure as fuck not happening with the tories though!
Then those that don’t turnout can’t complain after the fact. “Sure, keep destroying my country!”
Which option doesn't keep destroying the country?
That's for you to decide on, and for you to make your voice heard on. If you think neither option is a way to do so, then spoil your ballot, or at the very least vote for change because a potential shit government is better than a proven shit government.
A pineapple could beat the Tories at the next election. I will likely have to vote because it's a solid Tory constituency which could fall. But this Labour party will only keep the Tories' seats warm for them. I will be holding my nose and refusing to pretend that anything good is happening.
Great! I agree the labour party as it exists is quite a stench too, but I'd take them over the tories no problem
It isn't that they're "dull", it's that they offer the exact same bullshit and serve the same overlords, rather than the public.
This is deliberate of course, and trying to frame it as somehow the public's fault and not the systems' is gross propaganda.
Either way - we are not the US, and we do have the ability to vote "none" in protest.
DO.
Well, if there's low turnout from the Tories, sounds like suddenly everyone else's vote matters more.
Be sure to still vote, and make sure your friends and (maybe) family do to. I mean, if your friends and family were pro-Brexit, and somehow still are/would vote for it again, maybe just leave them be; sounds like a lost cause politically.
Which is why voting should be compulsory. Even if you only write 'Shove it' on the ballot paper.
What would that achieve Vs just not voting? You're filtering out the population that don't want to vote either way. I don't think any party would suddenly care more if they could "see" people spoiling their ballot paper Vs just not filling it in.
You'd then also have to set up some sort of commission to fine people for not voting. Doesn't sound like an effective use of time.
What would that achieve Vs just not voting?
Actually a great question, and the answer isn't necessarily obvious for someone who hasn't had experience with compulsory voting.
The effect of compulsory voting is that voter suppression techniques (discouraging people from wanting to vote, making it hard for certain people to vote, etc.), like the ones being discussed here become impossible. The AEC has to make it easy for every Australian to vote, and the government has to fund them appropriately to be able to do that. Elections are always held on a Saturday, to ensure the maximum amount of people can vote on the day. Prepolling is also extremely easy for people who can't make it on the day. Most people do have a preference one way or the other, even if that preference isn't enough to get out and vote normally. By making it compulsory, even those people will have their say. You can't run a campaign designed less to make yourself seem good than to simply make people think it's not worth the effort of voting. You have to actually convince people yes, you are the better option.
Yes, some people still choose to give an informal vote (often unofficially referred to as "spoiling" their ballot). Putting a blank ballot in the box, or writing something you think is funny, or drawing a penis on the ballot, are popular examples of deliberate informal votes. In 2022, we had a voter turnout of 89.82% of enrolled voters. Of those, just 5.19% ballots were informal. It's impossible to know how many of the informal ballots were mistakes by the voter versus deliberately "spoilt" ballots. But that's a total formal vote of 85.16% of enrolled voters. Compare that to the UK's 67.3% turnout at the last UK general election and the difference is stark. Think also that the percentage of eligible voters who are enrolled to vote in Australia is much higher than in the UK, again due to the compulsory vote, and the difference becomes even more significant.
I was not expecting this answer. Thanks, it's actually made me rethink my views on the matter. 🙏
Well, spoiled ballots are tracked and when there's a higher than normal proportion of spoiled ballots its clear there's something wrong, which can be the basis for various courses of action.
Calling it a spoiled ballot is usually fine, but from my time doing work for the AEC I wanna point out that technically, what @baggins@beehaw.org described above isn't what would be classified as a "spoiled" ballot. It's an informal vote. Officially, spoiled ballots are when a voter brings it back to the polling official and says "I made a mistake, can you give me another one?" They go in a special envelope and never go in the ballot box, unlike informal votes.
TIL!
I can't comment on the effectiveness, but doesn't Australia do this? Their voter turnout is around 90%. I think the 10% are the real part of eligible voters who don't want to vote not the 30-40% you see in some other countries. What do you think?
Because some of those will vote legitimately. 'You want to slag off the government/MPs? Then vote - or keep your trap shut and suck it up.' That needs to be on posters.
And to wheel out the old chestnut - people died so that we can sit on our arses and complain. Get out and vote.
And of course you can always vote by post. Not exactly difficult.
I think Curtice underestimates how much people want the Tories out, to be honest. I think we'll see high levels of tactical voting among people who want the Tories out, which is nearly everyone, and that will drive higher turnout.
EDIT: Just saw this, lot of it about in this thread:
“If Starmer wants to win a general election, then he’s going to have to compromise and do things that I might not like to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters. Now, that might lead to improvements in the lives of the majority of people and remove the worst government in living memory, but is that worth me having to put up with him not doing everything that I specifically want him [sic] from a Labour government? Not really.”
Yay! That makes it even easier for the Tory party to get away with rampant breaches of election campaign laws - just like they have since 2009!!
This is why compulsory voting is so good!
I am in a safe Labour seat but I'll be voting Green. Labour lost my vote when they continued drifting to the right.
If you're in a safe seat then by all means.
But I'll say to everyone here the same thing I say to Americans. Yous need to be pushing hard for a better electoral system. First past the post shouldn't qualify as democracy, in my opinion. It's just that bad. IRV is the bare minimum that should be acceptable. But ideally, you should push for some sort of proportional system like STV or MMP.
Electoral reform should be every intelligent voter's highest priority, because without it you'll always be stuck with the same two parties doing the same dull shit.
Shame neither party are actually offering electoral reform (and why would they - the current form works perfectly well, for them)
@DessertStorms @GreyShuck @Fudoshin @Zagorath
That's why I'm hoping that no party wins overall majority. PR is the only way things will change.
I doubt a coalition of the two (which Starmer would undoubtedly agree to) wouldn't be any better unfortunately..
The fact is the system isn't broken, it's working exactly as intended. Which is why we need to abolish it entirely. Hanging hopes on electoral politics is continuing to play the same rigged game hoping those in charge will change the rules.. They aren't going to.
@DessertStorms @GreyShuck @Fudoshin @Zagorath
You're right, but without a full-scale revolution how do we get there?
By accepting that a revolution is necessary. There is no fixing ("reforming") capitalism. Or a monarchy. Or a parliament that consists of an entire house of unelected "gentry". The system was never meant to serve us and it never will.
Capitalism has been reformed, repeatedly. There are different forms of it, it evolves all the time. That was a key part of Marx's philosophical stance, that capitalism was an ever-changing, revolutionary force, both destructive and creative; that was what he admired about it, in fact! Clement Attlee and other world leaders reformed capitalism with the Bretton Woods agreement and the many reforms we made post-war within countries. I think it's very doubtful that a post-war revolution in the UK would've turned out well, given how the other post-war revolutions shaped up. Even Thatcher 'reformed capitalism' in this country (very much for the worse, obviously!).
As to your specific points... we have reformed all those things, repeatedly. It's really quite odd to point to a country that has a constitutional monarchy, which used to be an absolute monarchy, and insist there's no reforming that monarchy. It's the way it is because we reformed it. In fact, we last reformed it in 2013. And the Lords was last reformed in 2015. The Commons was also reformed, for the better, in 2015 to allow recall of MPs.
Now, if you agree that these things are better than the alternative, that is the same thing as agreeing with reform. I think you and I probably agreee that the reforms didn't go far enough, or even that it would be better to do away with some of these things altogether, but it's not true to say that they can't be reformed; abolishing the monarchy would be a reform, albeit a major one. Barbados did it very recently, again without a revolution. Even changing the Lords to an elected chamber or getting rid of the last Hereditary Peers would be reforms, and I imagine we'd both welcome them, up to a point!
With the right pressure, I think Labour might be convinced. The Conservatives only got a majority at the last election because of FPTP. The two elections before that were even worse for the Conservatives' overall vote.
This is especially true if Labour is only able to govern in coalition with LibDems and SNP.
Lmfao, ok.. You go ahead and pin your hopes on the person who has literally purged Labour of anyone even slightly left leaning, who thinks racism is a joke, who thinks how disabled people are treated is just fine, who doesn't give a fuck about the poor, who is only there to serve the establishment - to change the system that offers him the only shot at power. See how that works out for you...
Meanwhile those of us already targeted by the government, who know new labour isn't going to change a thing will continue to suffer while you folks pat yourselves on the back for picking the "lesser evil" because you're too scared of actually standing up for yourselves.
At the end of the day they need to win the election.
At this point I’d 100% take a shitty labour government that’s compromising, because it’s the first step to moving things back to the left.
If we had a better voting system then go for it, but I just think it’s silly for someone to waste a vote (if they aren’t in a safe seat).
Funnily enoguh I'm in a Labour safe seat and commented in another post my thiking on the vote:
I was gonna vote Green but they’re so non-existant in my constituency I may vote Lib Dem who are 4th. It’s a Labour safe seat so it’s not handing it to the Tories to vote my conscience. I’m Green economically but Lib Dem socially. Since Lib Dems are higher I’ll put my vote there.