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Three Reasons Not to Vote

 

 

“I feel it is a far more potent political act to completely renounce the current paradigm than to participate in even the most trivial and tokenistic manner, by obediently X-ing a little box. Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that’s not on the ballot.”

 

                                                             (Russell Brand, Guest Editing the New Statesman Magazine,2013)

 

 

 

 

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A Brief Critical Inquiry into Indirect Democracy

 

 

JIMI ZINE

In Britain 2010, before the General Election, Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, the most senior figures in the liberal democrat party, publicly signed a pledge with the National Union of Students to vote against any increase in tuition fees and campaign for a ‘fairer alternative’. They then, as cabinet ministers, went on to do the opposite and vote for their triplingin Parliament, as part of a coalition government, to national outrage and ridicule. Many people saw these events and drew the conclusion that these two individuals are simply hypocrites and anomalies, happy to sell out any principles they may claim to hold, or promises they might make, in order to obtain power. 

Although this may be to some extent true, this view ignores all the other occasions politicians of all colours have failed to deliver on their promises, and it also ignores the external, economic and political pressures and constraints Nick Clegg, Vince Cable and all politicians are forced to deal with, outside of their direct control, when they obtain power. People who vie for power are both ‘often’ disingenuous and ‘always’ highly restricted, in what they can practically change, in all kinds of ways.

If we vote in a candidate in an election, and are dissatisfied with the candidate’s performance, the only thing we can do is vote for someone else next time, who will most likely perform similarly, given they’ll face similar constraints in office.

Of course all candidates are individuals with individual opinions on right and wrong and with individual policies they may claim to want to pursue, but to those of us interested in significant, progressive change, voting via representative democracy as it stands, offers us very little if anything to this end, candidates cannot and will not be significantly different in power.

 

 

 

 

1 Once a representative is voted in, they ultimately make decisions on your behalf, without your involvement, and claim it’s legitimate.

 

To vote in contemporary elections is in effect to delegate and surrender your involvement in decision making to someone you likely barely know, if at all. This is a bad idea for two principal reasons. Firstly, it serves generally to disassociate you from the decision-making processes, as rather than engaging and voting for issues or ideas regularly, you are voting once every half decade for people to make them (for a living), hoping the person elected will somehow make the best possible decisions in all cases, in an autonomous fashion whilst you continue with your life.

 

This is clearly not going to work effectively as one person cannot possibly represent the wealth of opinion of his or her electorate. The electorate’s priorities, interests and concerns cannot possibly be in line, encapsulated and singularly channelled by one individual, in any meaningfully representative way. 

 

 

Secondly voting people serves to legitimise this system as rational democracy when it is anything but, as the political class claims their autonomous decision-making is legitimate because they were voted for by people from their constituency, and that this form of participation is the best possible form of participatory democracy, despite the gaping disconnect and the vast swathes of people that voted for other candidates or nobody at all.

 

 

2 Voting is extremely ineffective in bringing about significant change 

 

The vast majority of significant positive political change throughout history has come through organisation, social mobilisation, horizontalism and direct action of one type or another, rather than through the ballot box. Our ability to rally together, resist injustice and oppose immorality wins political gains, rather than guessing who will make a better person to bring about positive change, which is after all the point of politics.

 

Even if the person you vote for did manage to get elected, they are still unlikely to bring about change, for instance, they may be unable to keep to their promises and manifestos, given the reality of the economic circumstances and restrictions they are faced with in power (the power of ‘the markets’, of capital/corporate interests and budget restrictions), they may be unwilling to try to cause change in fear of rocking the boat and damaging the future career and prospects, they may be lobbied, whipped and bribed into changing their views to suit the status quo, or they simply may become out of touch, ignorant and forgetful of the issues they were mandated to address. 

 

 

Equally, candidates seeking office often seek to appear practical and ‘centrist’ to show they are able to work within the confines of the system, meaning most candidates standing for election won’t even offer significant change, they will offer merely very modest reform, or suggest you vote for them to effectively manage and ‘conserve’ the way things are. This is done to win as many easy votes as possible from people who have already abandoned hope of significant, positive change altogether and to appeal to our potential sense of fear that someone outside the so called mainstream consensus like Caroline Lucas, George Galloway, Nigel Farage or Nick Griffin, will come along and do an even worse job than the people currently in power, or people like them.

 

At best, politicians will dilute and co-opt real political movements that already exist, when legislating meaningful change, an example being the minimum wage in Britain, fought for since the 1980s, as a response to declining trade unions, union power and union membership, and eventually legislated for in 1998, at a very low rate, by the newly elected Labour party.

 

That same political pressure could have been directly applied to industry nationwide to increase wages to at least minimum living standards, something that is still not even being offered by any British political party, beyond the Labour Party’s tokenistic proposal to bribe companies who pay the living wage with tax breaks…

 

 

There are simply way more effective methods in affecting political economy for the better, namely direct action of various sorts and raising awareness through communication. This applies equally to forcing people with power to listen to us in the here and now, and to a future, participatory system.

 

 

3 By non-voting, spoiling, abstaining or voting ‘none of the above’ (were it to be available), we are actively voicing our disdain with the system as a whole, whilst also avoiding the dissatisfaction & angst associated with supporting a candidate, only to be inevitably let down later.

 

To refuse to play the voting game is just as important as playing, to realise the futility of the whole process is a step in the right direction, and to not vote is a small but worthwhile expression of that feeling. This is true freedom of expression, protected under the universal declaration of human rights, and is a growing movement across the globe helping to lead the way toward a more participatory idea of democracy, explored in depth in articles like these.

 

 

The problem with voting is not that the right candidates aren’t standing for election, it’s that the system we employ discourages and even all out prevents real change. The lesser of two terrible options is still a terrible option and if we vote we are, at least indirectly, responsible for the candidates we elect and the decisions they take, whereas if we non-vote, we maintain our integrity and avoid culpability -in this scenario we cannot be held responsible for any decisions taken by the people elected. However voting is not really a matter of ethics, as some people suggest, the idea we have a duty to vote for someone, is a nonsense mostly pursued by the minority who benefit from the system as it stands, rather than by credible proponents of change. 

 

In theory if the non-voting movement was extremely successful and nobody voted except for the people standing voting for themselves and one other person in each constituency, a candidate could be elected on a majority of one and assume office, but they would have no mandate or legitimacy to lead or represent the masses, and people would be more willing to involve themselves in direct and active forms of democracy, exercising power for themselves, rather than passively voting a random person into power every five years.

 

 

In conclusion, the British Labour party, in their ‘cost of living contract’, state:

 

Elections are a moment when people have the chance to change their own community and our country. This contract sets out the concrete steps for how we can make that change happen.

 

Here they basically imply the only way we can affect change is by voting Labour in elections and here they suggest their mildly reformist ten-point plan, drawn up without our involvement and without legal guarantees, is the only and best positive way forward for us collectively. 

 

The idea we should ‘Vote Labour’ is being sold on the idea it will improve our lives in the future, relative to the failures of the current government, encouraging us to think only narrowly in the limited false duality of left and right, mildly reformist or mildly regressive. It seems clear by this point it’s all largely an illusory farce barely addressing symptomatic problems over time, if at all, and ignoring root causes.

 

If we’re interested in something more significant I think it’s time we try some new ideas. Don’t delude yourself and don’t waste your time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As our cities progress, so do we as people. But do the lines between public and private life become blurred? 

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A good example of this is Brighton’s Green Party council, elected in 2011, who campaigned on an agenda of anti-cuts, anti-austerity and an end to politics as usual. When facing the realities of power they in fact implemented cuts, they tried and succeeded in cutting the pay of many workers working in the city’s recycling & refuse sector, they scrapped the city’s mobile library, closed public toilets, slashed money from adult social care and children’s services, increased parking charges and are looking to increase council tax by 5%. In short, pragmatism will always win over principle and it will always be at the detriment of the electorate as a whole.

 

Coalitions between political parties water down pledges, principles and manifestos to an even greater degree through political compromise. With the local and European elections coming up at the end of May 2014, the next UK general election rapidly approaching in May 2015, and a million different ‘why not to vote UKIP’ articles being penned and published every week, I’d like to add some substance to a slogan, ‘Don’t Vote, Organise!’ which is perhaps more relevant now than ever before. 

 

Here are three reasons in favour of not voting for representatives in all present and future elections, as a counter & critique of the commonly held (yet woefully under-examined) idea we must all vote to ‘have our say and be heard’. ​​​​​​​​​​

 

 

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