ec2-18-190-156-80.us-east-2.compute.amazonaws.com | ToothyWiki | RecentChanges | Login | Webcomic A GeneralElection? is when every adult who isn't a prisoner or member of the House of Lords has the right to vote for their local MP.
You forgot the insane and foreigners. AFAIK the law currently excludes them, too. --Edith
Does "the insane" include the senile or those otherwise not in a fit state to decide? I have worrying visions : "Just sign here, Grandma, on this Vote By Proxy application...heh heh heh." -- Xarak
Only if they're actually sectioned. Postal vote rigging is not a topic of fun :( --Vitenka
We have one on May 5th 2005.
Fewer people voted last time in 2001 than any time in recent history (since at least before the war I think).
Some might say that the reason is our FirstPastThePost ElectoralSystem?, which means that only about 800,000 of the voters live in seats that are likely to change hands.
Others might say that the two main parties are too similar in their policies.
What if they could change the laws of physics, what would the parties do? /Physics
(PeterTaylor) I'd say that the two main parties are too likely to change their policies within a month of winning the election. Campaign promises don't seem to be regarded as forming a contract - I suppose that intent to create legal relations is not presumed, because there certainly seems to be offer, acceptance and consideration.
I expect Labour to stay in power but with a significantly reduced majority, with gains by the LibDems. The ConservativeParty? looked threatening for a bit, but I don't see them winning. They're coming ever closer to being an explicitly racist party. --AlexChurchill
Big discussion on /Immigration moved to its own page.
Quite apart from their policies, I would never vote Conservative because of their populist, borderline anti-intellectual ads and general negative campaigning. It's not going to do them any good, but I really didn't expect it from a British party. But look on the bright side - the posters are nice and easy to deface. "Are you smoking what we're smoking?" is one of my favorites ^_^ -- Xarak
Better would be to put under the cleaner hospitals one 'We should know - we contracted out hospital cleaning.' Stuff like that exposing their hypocrisy given their record in government. Also on crime where it rose under 18 years of Tory government. --MawKernewek
Actually, crime rose under Thatcher (as it had under all of her predecessors) but fell under Major. It definitely fell when MichaelHoward was home secretary, by more than under any of his successors. Conservative policies worked. Left-wingers refusing to acknowledge this wind me up as much as Republicans do with similar myopia in the US. --SF
Negative campaigning is done by all parties, particularly Labour trying to frighten disillusioned Labour voters away from voting LibDem by raising fears about the Tories. I have seen a LibDem[e-card] on their website using the Tories' own slogan with a dodo with a blue rosette and "are you thinking what we're thinking?" --MawKernewek
Quite. I don't think the Conservative campaign is any more or less negative than any of the other party campaigns, to be honest; Labour has gone strongly AdHominem against Howard in addition to the points already mentioned. --SF
I do feel the Tories are worse than Labour in this regard. My real worry is that the Tories seem to be doing their best to portray Britain as crime-ridden, terrorist plagued and with pandemic MRSA. They're saying that Britain is in crisis and that's when people turn to extremism. -- Xarak
Saying "the opposition says the country is in a worse state than the government does" is not exactly an argument. Labour are saying that everything is wonderful because they're in government; they're saying plenty of nasty things about the Tories. --SF
OK, but the Tories are playing up the problems with the UK more than the Lib Dems, and more than they did at the last election. -- Xarak
Meh, I think they're much of a muchness. Comedy shows are, at least, getting good mileage out of pointing out the hypocrisy of saying "Oh, we're not campaigning negatively, unlike some people we could name..." --Vitenka (In general though, this election is a lost cause for the Tories unless they manage to stir up a crisis - there isn't a big populist crisis, the government has done 'ok' and most people will just let it ride.)
Vitenka has actually been caught and has an identity now. The effect of this seems to be that he no longer gets voter registration cards in other peoples names. He doesn't get one of his own. This is unhappy, since this is the first election he felt worth voting in. (ie. where the outcome wasn't blatantly painfully obvious) The problem is that both of the main parties do the same research and reach the same "This is popular" conclusions. They no longer have idealism, it seems. In some ways this is good - there is a 'right thing' to do on most issues, and sane politicans should reach it. In others - it makes the whole process a bit pointless. And the lib-dems seem to have dropped their capaign to rationalise the voting process so... --Vitenka
Why don't you get one of your own? o.O - SunKitten
Update: It arrived, belatedly. See my HomePage?. --Vitenka (Pondering what it means for candidates to change teams after PostalVoting? and deciding that they could do so after election, anyway - we're not officially a party system, after all.}
I'm not sure whether they have dropped it, it's just they haven't been talking about it very much. They pledge to introduce a fairer voting system but it may well be different from what they wanted before. On page 19 of their manifesto, it says they will introduce Single Transferable Vote (the system used in CUSU elections) which isn't necessarily the same as Proportional Representation. I suppose this makes it fairer without losing the connection between a constituency and a particular local MP. I'm sure there could be a lot of different variants based on whether the second and higher order preferences were distributed only within the constituency or more generally. --MawKernewek
SingleTransferableVote? suffers from the major problem of being too damn complicated for most people. Why not go for the simpler 'rate one candidate +2, one +1 and one -1' and most points wins? --Vitenka (It breaks if you have a LOT of candidates likely to win, though -every system has a break)
One person, one vote. How hard is that? You've just given one person four votes for no good reason whatsoever. --SF
I'd love to see that system in place, if only to see people abstain with their positive votes and have a candidate get in with -147 votes to -479 --Edwin
The reason is half Edwin's, and half to help make tactical voting less important. The motivation is that you would have a tally of the plus and minus - letting you see whether a candidate is just 'a bit poular' or 'both loved and hated'. --Vitenka
What? No, you've strengthened tactical voting by giving each voter three more votes to use tactically. I don't see this as giving you a good system at all - it would kill off any form of radical politics whatsoever and drive all the parties into complete indistinguishability. --SF
Well, you've got one vote for the party you actually want to win, one vote for the party that probably will win and one vote for the party you hate. Maybe it should be two +1s instead of a +2 and a +1? But that's tinkering. --Vitenka (Who thinks we ought to move to DirectDemocracy? anyway, nowadays. Slap a URL onto parliament TV and let voting for MPs just be deciding who presents the debate well.)
I really don't understand why you get the two positive votes; unless you're electing two MPs you get to vote in favour of one candidate, or the system is silly. I don't think it would remotely reduce tactical voting in any respect as the +2 will go the the candidate you want to win, irrelevant of which one you actually support; the +1 is irrelevant. And I really don't like the idea of negative votes; ultimately this just seems to be a way of trying to enhance the effect of tactical voting even further. The net effect would be a perennial Labour majority of 200, I think. --SF
I'm unconvinced that this would be the result. But I'll settle for something simpler - a requirement for Ron to be a candidate on every ballot. --Vitenka
Would you really want our political decisions made by the sort of person who'd religiously watch Parliament TV to get their say in? Or the single issue supporters who'd flood certain votes? --DR
Direct government by the masses would be effectively be a mediocracy - that's right, government by media. --Requiem
qqzm has been volunteered for poll-clerking. That's going to be a fun 15 hours sitting watching people vote...
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GeneralElection2005