On Where My Vote Goes

I have another exam in the morning, so again it seemed necessary to do some last minute procrastination.
I posted this rant on a friend’s wall a few minutes ago, but I’m moderately pleased with it, that is, for something I knocked off well after my pre-exam bed-time. I should clarify, the other people commenting on the same post were Laboury people too. Enjoy.

It concerns me slightly that most people seem to worry about AV because “it’ll hurt the Labour Party” or “those bloody fascists will get in”. In fact, they’re all the same arguments you could make in favour of gerrymandering.
I may find the BNP deeply distasteful, but I can’t see what right I have to dictate that they not be given power if that’s what the majority of the country favour on some level. I would, granted, emigrate to some nice, socialist country like the United States if Nick Griffin was made prime minister, but that’s my problem – not the voting system’s.
Maintaining an old-fashioned system in FPTP serves only to allow the larger parties – specifically the Conservative Party, but to a lesser extent, the Labour Party, to form large parliamentary majorities without winning the popular vote. In fact, it makes a Conservative majority remarkably difficult, thanks to the distribution of population in the UK. A fact which is normally born out in the popular vote, as it was in the 2010 General Election.

I also find it annoying when people say “Oh, you’ll get more hung parliaments under AV”. I’m not sure this is true, but if it is, that can only be a good thing. The present government is the result of a hung parliament, and is, by many accounts, hugely unpopular, but it’s putting the cart before the horse to suggest that the reason we have what is perceived to be a bad government is the fault of forced cooperation. As much as you may hate them, the LibDems have only served to dilute the Conservative agenda’s libido.

In summary, I’ll vote yes tomorrow. I’ll vote yes because the government needs to be reminded that the people have a voice in between General Elections. Ill vote yes tomorrow, because I’m not a puppet of the Labour Party.

I’ll vote yes if I can find the polling station.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 at 10:54 pm and is filed under General Rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.