Civic Duty

It’s an article of faith for me that voting is an absolutely essential part of being a citizen of any country. I would happily endorse the Australian approach where the election takes place on a weekend and you are fined if you don’t register a vote. That’s in direct conflict with the approach in the UK and the US where governments are trying to make it ever more difficult to vote in an attempt to fraudulently hold on to power. The type of voter fraud that gave the UK government the excuse of introducing the requirements for voter ID is vanishingly rare. The fact that nearly every type of ID for older voters was acceptable and only passports and driving licences were accepted for younger voters showed that this was a case of voters who as a group vote ‘in the right way’ being helped and voters who as a group vote ‘in the wrong way’ being hindered. The irony is, of course, that older voters are far more likely to vote in elections than younger voters anyway, which is why they are courted by political parties.

All of the above are merely functional issues that either force people to vote or dissuade them from doing so. However, there is no excuse for anyone not voting. If you don’t like the options in front of you, you owe it to previous generations who fought for your right to vote to come along in person or send in a postal vote that is spoiled in some way. In the future, hopefully the near future, there will be a way of harnessing technology to ensure that voters are able to exercise their democratic rights. It is easy to confirm identity with facial recognition and the opportunity for fraud would be far less than the critics would have you believe. In the UK the obvious approach would be to move elections to the weekend rather than continuing to tie it to the 18th century Market Days which is why we vote on a Thursday!! We all know that won’t happen because it won’t be acceptable to some interest group or another.

Anyway, the message here is to just vote even if you feel it’s a waste of time. Exercise your democratic rights. If you don’t you have no right to complain about anything the government does even if it leads to you being treated unfairly.