To think this is an immature approach to voting?

She should have made the effort and actually taken on board the available information. It will have been falling through her letterbox like confetti for the last month ffs.

Sure - but the kind of person OP is talking about claims not to know and is very unlikely to do any of this. Instead, they're whining about government but refusing to get engaged.

I used to be chair of the PTA. People would ask me if the parents who never helped annoyed me. My answer was always that the ones who came to us and asked us why we'd done x or y and explained why that didn't work for them were fine, even if they didn't actually do any of the work. Ditto the ones who didn't do anything but frankly, had no opinion on what we were doing and jsut let it all happen were fine too.

It was the ones bitching and complaining in the bacground but not engaging at all that pissed me off.

There was a woman on our local Nextdoor app last week. She had fallen out with her husband and wasn't speaking to him. Usually she would ask him who to vote for, apparently. So she asked 'Nextdoor' instead. Big mistake

The maddest thing is, she had posted a huge rant the previous week on the same app, complaining about The Patriarchy.

Batshit.

If people don’t like any of the parties on offer they should go along and spoil their paper so at least the fact that x number of people did that is recorded

You’re right but I guess it’s not necessarily your place to say it to her as a work colleague

Khan was elected mayor on a 40% turnout.

you don't get to comment or complain about anything related to public policies, public services, legal system etc

What absolute nonsense. Of course you can complain without voting yourself. You can write to the council, lobby your MP, sit on a school governor or police board, join a campaigning group, organise public meetings and petitions, join a political party...etc

How passive do you have to be to show up every 5 years and put an X next to candidates whose policies and manifesto you had no influence in shaping? And then smugly congratulate yourself about how you're a much better democratic citizen than everyone else?

Not a democratic view.

70% is more than any recent general election though isn't it? It plummeted massively after the '97 election, and though it has slowly increased at the last one (67%) we were still nearly 5 points below the turnout in '97, and 10 below the turnout in '92. So one could say it was the Blair govenment's first term that broke the trus of the electorate ;)

By reading the manifestos you are already far ahead of most of us. I think expectations are unreasonable. No one expects the individual voter to be a political genius. And I don't think the average voter should be expecting a political party to necessarily deliver a manifesto in its entirely, especially in the short term.

it's about general direction of travel and which party you think is going i the broadly right direction based on your needs, preferences and beliefs.

You are also different to OP's colleague. YOu're not saying you're not voting, you're saying you don't want to discuss it. Fine. OP's colleague on the other hand had announced she's not voting. which, for the record, I consider ridiculous and a cop out.

I get that, but it doesn’t disprove my point, perhaps in a democracy nobody has the right to complain?

another question, is someone who votes every few years, and posts a bit on MN, really doing more and more invested than (let’s assume they don’t vote) a taxi driver who bores 30 different people a day with their political views or a vicar working in the community and visiting people in hospital or prison?

I’m not voting for the same reason that your colleague gave. I’m very highly educated but I’ve had an unbelievably difficult and stressful few months and I haven’t had the time or mental capacity to do the research that I think is warranted to make an informed decision. Yes, I do feel a bit ashamed, especially after people have fought for us to be able to vote, live in a democracy etc. However, that’s just the situation I find myself in this year and I’d rather not vote than vote badly. I guess we don’t know all the details of what’s going on for other people.

I used to do political canvassing - when pushed almost every person with her wording actually meant “I can’t be arsed”. They just know it’s an awful thing to say.

Plenty of people aren’t educated but still have an opinion. Plenty of people who don’t know enough about it will do what someone they know does , or get influenced by somwthing something on tv etc.

”I don’t really know enough about it” = “I don’t give a shit”.

She’s an adult with free will OP.
Perhaps you should respect her choice.

I'm a very blunt person, but have used similar lines to shut down conversation when someone asks me a question where the answer is basically none of their business. I don't enjoy 'political debate' because 99% of the time it's essentially people parroting what they listen/read to in their particular echo chamber. I've educated myself in as much as I've read all the manifestos for each candidate and voted for the one I'm most comfortable with. However, I wouldn't consider myself expert enough to actually assess how likely it is each policy could/will be implemented, which at the end of the day seems to be the most important factor. I can agree with your colleague that I'm not informed in that regard (which is realistically probably the case for your average Joe) I don't think there's anything 'lazy' in admitting that.

My former colleague used to ask her husband who he’d voted for and just copy him 🤦‍♀️

This is a really basic lack of understandig of political processes.

So, I've said "Yes" to Party x and now I'm never allowed to complain or ask for anything ever again? To use the marriage analogy in my last post - that's like saying, "right, we got married and I stood up in the big white dress in front of all my friends and family and now I can never ever complain about a thing DH does, ask him to change, expect new things etc". Rubbish. Instead, getting married told the whole world that me and Dh were going to try to make a life together and that we would engage with each other on a daily basis to make decisions that work best for us, and in the longer term, for our children and other family.

I see a vote as more like buying shares in a company. I have a stake and I am actively involved so now I expect the political leaders to remember that ultimately, they are answerable to me. Because I can choose to vote for someone else next time.

I generally can’t influence them to bring a working pen (or not break the one I lend them) so I don’t give much of a chance to me influencing their politics. Added to which I’m a professional, and quite able to discuss politics without giving my own view away/presenting it more positively than other views. I teach English, so I often have to talk about politics to make sense of the literature (An Inspector Calls, for eg).

The thing about this is I sort of get it.

Except, even with a government we like, we expect our politicians to make the really tough decisions day in and day out. We expect them to decide what is going to be best, even when no solution is perfect.

And yet we can't be bothered to make a similar choice once every 5 years?!

I really don't understand why there's this view today that politicians and political parties have to be 100% perfect 100% of the time. It's a blody difficult job.

And the whole, "i can't vote for a party that has a single policy I disagree with".. How on earth are you able to maintain frienships or a marriage? DH and I broadly agree on the big things, but there are loads of small things we don't agree on. And that's just two people, making an effort every single day to be there for the other one and to keep our lives moving in tandem.

And yet we expect a large political party representing millions of people to have full agreement on each and every thing?

because if you don't vote, or at least spoil your paper, you aren't making any effort to engage with the process...to put your weight behind what you believe is right. If you don't engage with the process and then moan that you don't like this or that aspect of government then how will you answer when someone asks "so what did you do about it?" you are basically getting on the train we all have to ride and saying you don't care where it goes

I'd have thought you were a tit if you spoke to me like that. Each to their own on whether they choose to vote or not.

Surely it’s the other way around? Those who vote in a democracy do so in the knowledge that they accept the results whether or not they get their desired outcome? A vote for any candidate is a ticket to ride the train for better or worse, so how can you complain?

You must have missed all the posts on here about people voting for Labour against the "Tory scum". Do these people not sound dogmatic with polarised opinions to you ?

You don't have to be a 15 year old to hold dogmatic views on political issues.

Peoples opinions mature as they get older. There is a well known shift from left to right leaning views from young to older people.

I don't see that as a good reason to ban people under 40 voting just because their views haven't reached a stable conclusion.

I think that's an overstated problem. Especially if you teach understanding bias.

I think it’s a wasted vote but at least she’s honest about it. Better than the people who say “no because all the parties are terrible” and then complain - if it wasn’t pure laziness they’d realise you have to choose the lesser of the evils (or an independent).
I do use the “not informed enough” phrase to get out of conversations about conflicts etc. but then have to listen to even less informed people spouting their views

It does grind my gears a bit when women in particular don’t vote because barely 100 years ago we weren’t even allowed to