Do people not understand how elections work?

[TeenLifeMum]

In reference to the petition to call for another general election. You don’t get to say “oh wait, actually I’ve changed my mind. I had no clue the Labour Party would try to redistribute wealth and it would impact me so I want a re do!”

Also, so many bots / people from Indonesia filling it in. I have a certain group of people on my fb sharing it. Do they really think we’ll get to vote again? And would they all vote Conservative now?

Am I the one missing something?

Didn't we have a vote on PR? (In the early stages of the coalition)?

Isn't it just so odd that after partygate, lockdowns, Christmas being cancelled, the giving away of billions of pounds of our money to the tories and their mates through fraudulent covid contracts, the corruption, ineptitude, the destruction of the NHS, the rise in poverty, the cutting of almost all social services, cutting benefits leaving disabled people destitute, the reduction in police numbers, cost of living crisis, austerity, the deterioration in schools, the failing train services, the closure of safe asylum routes leading to the rise of small boats to unprecedented numbers all in the last 14 years...

What people are most upset about?

A proposal to tax millionaire landowners but not now. Only AFTER they're dead.

Someone make it make sense.

👏👏

It's stuff like this petition that makes you realise that modern warfare is not feet on the ground.

It won’t make a difference. We already know millions don’t want Labour - Labour only got 33% of the vote and less votes overall than they got at the last election even though they lost that one. But they have a disasterously large majority and can happily ignore the electorate for another three years at least. Signing it is a message of dissatisfaction but doesn’t mean much.

Given it is part of the parliamentary petitions system that enables voters to get subjects to a debate in the commons, I would expect they are capable of noticing if thousands of people purport to live at the same address and all have various dubious email addresses. If need be they could cross-reference with the electoral roll.

What a very strange response.

It makes people with less intelligence feel like they're doing something.

I am so pleased that you started this thread. So few people have signed it in relation to the number of voters in the UK. Maybe they should ask Trump about oversetting an election.

PR very often gives power to even more minority parties. Just look at Scotland where we have Green MSPs whose name never appeared on a ballot but who got a seat despite 94% of the electorate voting against their party. And then those same few MSPs held the balance of power.

There won't be another election until the end of the term (unless Starmer/Labour wants one, which would only be if they were confident of winning). Even if it is debated in parliament and voted on, Labour has a huge majority so will win the vote.

Why so many threads on this petition, either to sign it or about it.

Being terribly sad... I loves a good election night coverage so bring it on.
Being in possession of more than one braincell I know it can't really happen.

Probably not. The older I get the more I realise how stupid most people are. Its scary that they have a vote at all .

It would be infinitely better to pile pressure on constituency MPs than some pointless petition. I think there are many who don't even understand how their own democratic institutions work, so headline grabbing populist notions like a 'petition' seem to give an outlet for frustrations. But actually it is a waste of time.

I'm not saying being concerned about small boats is racist, or being concerned about immigration. I'm all for open and frank discussion on the subject. However, there's no denying that a lot of the rhetoric around it is racist. I had to come off X because of vile racist statements (no, not people raising concerns about boats but real racism).
I also strongly believe that there are far greater problems facing us than asylum seekers. Yet people are led to believe (by the media, by social media agitators) that it's the most pressing problem we face.

People are always petitioning about something or other. I'm not sure this is really a big deal - I've certainly not heard about it anywhere other than here.

No, we just are surrounded by stupid people

I find the whole thing absolutely astounding

I imagine they’ll filter the bots out

Yes, there was a referendum. The majority voted to retain the current electoral system.

Some people don't seem to want grown ups in charge.

They only want to hear populist leaders who offer glib solutions to difficult problems.

I really wonder how much change people think Starmer could have implemented in five months. There’s 14 years of chaos to unravel and that’s going to take considerable time. Probably more than one term in office too. The reverse Brexit petition got over 6 million votes and didn’t change anything. Neither will this.

Yes this is exactly it. There are definitely malign forces at work, stirring up trouble online. Recently, when I went on Facebook, I was bombarded with loads of different British "patriot" groups. They all had different names yet shared the same photos and same text, all about foreigners taking over and destroying the country. It seemed very obvious to me that it was the work of Russian bots or something. To see so many identical groups all in one day. Most strange. Yet people were getting riled up and angry. It was working.
I agree that getting offline is the best approach. I need to break my addiction.

Small boats is a tiny proportion of immigration. Most of it is legal immigration and results from policies put in place by the last Conservative government who were still in power about five minutes ago.

After Brexit both increased both dangerous illegal and legal immigration increased. Really took back our borders didn't we, Boris Johnson?

But yeah, blue passports, totally worth it.🙄

Indeed.

I think people know full well that nothing will change. It’s just their way of registering their unhappiness with what is happening.

I don’t know anyone in real life who genuinely thinks another GE is a good idea - it’s a sort
of protest thing.

But I also don’t know anyone who had anything more enthusiastic than a resigned apathy to their own vote. Labour aren’t great, the Conservative govt were worse, nothing amazing is happening economically. I am assuming things get worse before they get better but I am just plodding along wondering when that might be, and dreading the next election.

Sunak did force inflation down so that was one good thing but probably Labour could have done the same. It’s too early to see how damaging the Budget could be but you can see Labour thinks anyone who has a small business deserves to be clobbered hard.

It’s all paralysingly dull.

I think he's doing an excellent job. Anyone who manages to upset both the CBI and the NFU (two of the most entitled self-interest groups in the country) in the same week is getting my vote.