Every vote counts – to waste yours would be near-criminal

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/07/every-vote-counts-election

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Today, every vote has never mattered more. Stepping round to mark the X and stuff the paper in the black tin, how long ago five years feels. Now we feel the error of the hastily spatchcocked Fixed Term Parliament Act, cementing another five years ahead, but how can anyone miss this one chance?

Last time, only 65% voted. During the campaign I’ve heard many bad reasons for not voting. You can wag a finger at non-voters, telling them about the millions around the world who would willingly risk lives to evict dictators. You can recall the Chartists and the suffragettes, but vote refuseniks have their own bad reasons.

The most depressing non-voters are those whose lives will change for much better or much worse from day one of the next government – yet the poor and the young vote least. David Cameron pledges unimaginable cuts to the benefits of the lowest paid and their children, yet many who will be most affected will fail to vote today.

Every canvasser is defeated by the mind-blowing ignorance of those for whom “politics” is not on their radar, unaware how their daily struggles will be fought out in distant Westminster. Research shows many “I never voters” are weak readers, afraid they might get it wrong. But “They’re all the same” is also a shout of class alienation against those Westminster people who are not us. Labour has lost touch with too large a slab of the very people it fights for. Ed Miliband’s manifesto is for them, yet many don’t feel it – an inevitable consequence of extreme social inequality.

If Labour brings in votes at 16, it should make first-time voting compulsory as a quid pro quo. Time to make citizenship an obligatory GCSE: without an exam, it’s ignored. Teachers should take sixth formers down to the polls: evidence from the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests that those who vote once get the habit. I’d go for Australian-style compulsion for all, with voting as an obligation of citizenship: objectors can spoil their ballot papers. First, though, make voting easy – by mobile phone, over a week, polling stations open on Sundays. Instead, Cameron deliberately made it harder, his new registration system disfavouring the young.

Other non-voters deserve no mercy. Their vote is far too precious to bestow on any of the parties on offer. No one is good enough for them, as if they expect a personal bespoke party, regardless of the necessary compromises in assembling a majority, blind to how parties work as portmanteaus of ideals and interests willing to travel together. Did those over-fastidious ones ever roll up their sleeves in the past five years to start a new party or movement, or shift an existing one? Fewer than 1% belong to any party, even fewer campaign to change the monstrous voting system, waiting for a better politics to be delivered to their doorstep by others.

A vote is a blunt instrument, not a sacrament. It’s a robust tool you should use to ensure you get the government you want – or the one you least dislike. Too negative? Tough, that’s how our miserable first-past-the-post system works. This country is deeply divided, left and right offering monumentally different futures. Vote Tory and you risk leaving Europe, with Scotland leaving the UK – shocking and irrevocable breakages. Nor does Miliband exaggerate when he defines today’s choice as a Tory government for the rich or a Labour government for working people.

So stark is that choice that wasting a vote is near-criminal. This week’s readership survey shows 22% of Guardian readers intend to vote Green. Yet in only one seat is a Green vote likely to yield an MP. The rest will be wasted. Worse, in some 20 tight Labour/Tory marginals a small number of Labour votes turning Green will tip that seat to Cameron.

Warning: a vote is not a personal accessory to show the world who you are. If it were a hat, a Green vote would be a fascinator with a perky feather. A Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition vote would be a blood-red beret of conviction. But Cameron will welcome them. Labour voters also must make painful sacrifices: in those crucial Lib Dem seats Cameron needs, double the nose pegs and lend your vote to the yellows again. Despite Nick Clegg’s treachery, stop Cameron claiming those 23 seats he needs for a majority.

What matters is not what your vote says about you, but how you use your vote for the good of the country and for others. With the Tories ready to proclaim Labour “illegitimate”, every single vote counts. Maximise the power of your vote, wherever you are. I like the founding Battersea Labour party motto: “Not for me, not for you, but for us.” Non mihi, non tibi, sed nobis.

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