Come my revolution, the apathetic will get their say

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/23/apathetic-general-election-none-of-the-above

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I do hope you're sitting down, because as political slogans go, the following is likely to excite you. So hold on to your hats, and here goes: we need a new kind of apathy. With just a year to go before the general election, I can think of no single more achievable boost to our democracy than having a none-of-the-above box added to every 2015 ballot paper, and an amendment to media regulations insisting that the disaffected be formally represented in all TV studios and other forums in the runup to polling day. They may well be the biggest political demographic.

At the time of writing, it was unclear how many people voted in the local and European elections, but one thing was crystal: the vast majority didn't. It doesn't look to have been a historically low showing, estimated at about 36%. But with predictions that next year's big one could rival the philosophically illegitimising depth of Labour taking 35% of a 61% turnout in 2005, how long should politicians be ethically permitted to ignore such a vast constituency?

A very long time indeed, were they to get their way. It is notable that the more obvious apathy seems to have become, via social media and so on, the more perversely inward looking politicians have got. They pretend they haven't noticed it; they refuse to conduct anything remotely resembling proper research into why it might be happening; they talk in ever more weird language. The only thing more pronounced than voter apathy has been the politicians' utter apathy towards doing anything about it.

So, yes, I keep reading that our politics is broken – but our apathy seems more pressingly knackered, because it's evidently so easy to discount it. You would scarcely know it existed from the election coverage, which valiantly discusses Thursday's minority activity the only way people seem to know how.

Even now, and in the coming days and weeks, the talk will be about how Cameron can alter his attack, or what Miliband must tactically rethink, or the meaning of Nigel Farage. It's the same incestuous, bubblicious way of talking about a world that appears to mostly ignore earthlings that has turned so many of those people off or driven them into the arms of protest voting. Behold our incredible shrinking politics, where the parties apparently see nothing wrong, practically or morally, in pursuing 35% strategies or dividing a few key marginals into titchy subgroups, and lavishing untold resources on targeting those voters almost personally with marketing as micro-sophisticated as it is a macro screw-you to everyone else.

Why do we need a none-of-the-above box when people are already perfectly entitled to spoil their ballot papers? My gut feeling is that for many perfectly nice British voters who feel they ought to turn out, spoiling a ballot is a graffiti-ish act of rebellion with which they would feel reflexively uncomfortable in a way that they wouldn't with putting a cross in a legitimised none-of-the-above box. And if you think that makes the Great British public sound preposterously meek, then do consider that this is a country whose most prominent so-called rebels are the tweed-jacketed Farage and the prime ministerial tennis partner Jeremy Clarkson.

Without wishing to crush anyone's self-image, it may be time to accept that Britain doesn't really "do" rebellion at this stage in its national journey. There's always Russell Brand, I suppose, and I occasionally picture him planning his revolution of a weekend, perhaps having motored down with his girlfriend, Jemima Khan, to her £20m Oxfordshire estate. But with the best will in the world, it's not exactly Wat Tyler.

For all that Brand's message of total disengagement from conventional politics speaks swiftly and seductively to many, it is disingenuously simplistic. He is an eloquent man, but I imagine his suggestion that all governments are exactly the same could be demolished in seconds by anyone whom coalition disability cuts have forced to scrimp on incontinence nappies.

For those without the luxury of time to wait until Russell's revolution coagulates, but who have really had it with voting with nosepegs, or tactically, or for people whose patio furniture or baroque home improvements they were stung for via the expenses racket, a none-of-the-above box would offer an alternative and considerably less ignorable way to be actively counted, and now.

At the very least, we might learn something. As the American psephological guru Nate Silver noted after he tried and failed to forecast the 2010 UK election with the same laser-like accuracy he brought to the US polls, the paucity of data about UK voting patterns is staggering. Silver contrasted the "abundance of data" collected before and after American votes with the failure to do even "the bare minimum" in the UK.

We aren't close to understanding many things about the way we decide how we're governed, and our overlords and ladies apparently don't care to assist us. So few can say with any sort of certainty what a properly promoted none-of-the-above box could take from this party or that. But is there anyone – with the exception of all politicians, including Farage – who could reasonably object to finding out?