To not vote?

[Newbie1999]

Prob been done to death, but I’m just not sure I can bring myself to vote for any of them.

@GiveHerHellFromUs

How do you know I’m not? That’s a huge assumption on your part.

"Does that make it acceptable to say that they probably don't want to vote?"

If their brain is incapacitated, yes. My point was that if you make it compulsory, all those who cant really get to voting stations or do a postal vote, then have the added worry they will be taken to court or fined.
Of course lots of people are able to and want to vote, that wasnt my point.

@Elphame because 40 minutes ago you said:

*Neither major party is fit to govern so I’ll either abstain or spoil my vote.

Why on earth would I vote for a “bad” party?*

@SunshineAngel Yours was more eloquent than mine!

Look at it from another point of view.

Buses.

If you were waiting for a bus, and there were 2 available but neither going direct to the required destination, would you choose to not get the bus at all, or take the one going closest to where you need to be?

It is the same with the election.

I don't want to vote for any of them, but I will vote for the one who is closest to my ideal.

Does that make sense?

Tanith I know because of history. I can look back at the election results since 1885 and see the percentage of voting share in our constituency and I cannot find any electoral result in the whole of the UK that has ever seen a swing of the size needed to oust our sitting MP.

There is a big difference between spoiling your ballot and not turning out.

@GiveHerHellFromUs

Ah the bad party comment was aimed at Bluntness who was advocating voting for a “bad party or local mp” rather than spoiling or abstaining.

Their post was directly above mine when I replied but in retrospect I should have tagged.

I asked:

"Does that make it acceptable to say that they probably don't want to vote?"

You replied:

If their brain is incapacitated, yes

Just because somebody is elderly, infirm or disabled doesn't mean that they necessarily have an incapacitated brain. You said that elderly and infirm people probably don't want to vote - you shouldn't make that kind of assumption.

My point was that if you make it compulsory, all those who cant really get to voting stations or do a postal vote

That wasn't the point you made. You made the point that the elderly and infirm probably don't want to vote.

Voter suppression is how Trump got in.

It was deliberate and planned, with ads and social media material microtargeted to persuade likely Democrat voters not to vote at all (with a different issue for each target group and focussed on marginal states).

But at the end of the day there was still going to be a new President.

By not voting against him, they made it Donald Trump.

I think it is appalling not to vote. Look into your local politics. Go and meet your candidates, take an interest and choose one.

They all tend to have hustings somewhere... go and ask them a question. I've already met the new Labour candidate here when he was campaigning in a town not so far away. I'm off to hustings on Wednesday to ask questions. Whilst I might not be enamoured with any of them, I want to know their views on local issues.

If you really cannot bear to vote for any candidate, spoil your ballot paper properly so it gets counted as a spoilt paper.

www.votenone.org.uk/protest_votes_count.html

"Does that make it acceptable to say that they probably don't want to vote?"

You replied:

If their brain is incapacitated, yes

Just because somebody is elderly, infirm or disabled doesn't mean that they necessarily have an incapacitated brain. "

Nobody said that, especially me. I have clarified my first post in further posts which you may not have seen. I am referring solely to those who are severely incapacitated, not those who are not.

"You said that elderly and infirm people probably don't want to vote - you shouldn't make that kind of assumption."

You have pulled this out of context. To clarify again, I was referring to those severely unwell or disabled, and who are unable to vote currently for a number of reasons. To give an example here...I have a family member who has a brain injury. He does not know really what the election is all about and hasnt been able to really follow it all. Should he be fined or sent to court for not voting? What about another relative, who gets care in the home and who worries about everything. Should she have that extra worry?

Voting should be compulsory."
Jusr think how difficult it would be getting the old, infirm and severely disabled to vote, when they probably dont want to anyway. What do we do about those who are mentally incapable?

This was your entire message where you clearly state that the old, infirm and severely disabled probably don't want to vote.

I have not taken anything out of context.

"My point was that if you make it compulsory, all those who cant really get to voting stations or do a postal vote

That wasn't the point you made. You made the point that the elderly and infirm probably don't want to vote."

You've pulled that out of context, also omitting to add the words severely disabled, which is what I said, and what I was referring to, obviously quite badly. Of course not all old are in that category, I didnt mean that. I was thinking of those that are severely unwell and uncapable of really voting.

There is compulsory voting in Australia and it works. 90% turn out and vote. If you are over 70 I think it is, it is not compulsory and there are obviously exemptions if you are ill. If there is no excuse you are fined.

They make it easy. Polling day is on a Saturday with community events and parties.

I think that should happen here.

Interview with Trump's Brad Parscale & team, including some from Cambridge Analytica, back in 2016 during US election:

www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/inside-the-trump-bunker-with-12-days-to-go

Trump’s campaign has devised another strategy, which, not surprisingly, is negative. Instead of expanding the electorate, Bannon and his team are trying to shrink it. “We have three major voter suppression operations under way,” says a senior official. They’re aimed at three groups Clinton needs to win overwhelmingly: idealistic white liberals, young women, and African Americans. Trump’s invocation at the debate of Clinton’s WikiLeaks e-mails and support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to turn off Sanders supporters. The parade of women who say they were sexually assaulted by Bill Clinton and harassed or threatened by Hillary is meant to undermine her appeal to young women. And her 1996 suggestion that some African American males are “super predators” is the basis of a below-the-radar effort to discourage infrequent black voters from showing up at the polls—particularly in Florida.
[...]
The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook “dark posts”—nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as Parscale puts it, “only the people we want to see it, see it.” The aim is to depress Clinton’s vote total. “We know because we’ve modeled this,” says the official. “It will dramatically affect her ability to turn these people out.”
[...]
Campaigns spend millions on data science to understand their own potential supporters—to whom they’re likely already credible messengers—but here Trump is speaking to his opponent’s.

Spoiled ballots are counted

So are the people who don't vote. What's your point? It's still amounting to one and the same thing. As said, no ones sitting looking at the cock drawn on some ballet paper thinking ah they are mounting a protest, let's tell Boris, No one gives a shiny shit.

They care about the ones that vote. Those are what matters. Spoiling your vote or not voting amounts to absolutely the same thing.

Wasting your vote, which women fought and died for you to have. Becaus men said we were not capable of making such important decisions. We didn't have the brain power to do so. Is simply shameful.

So yeah, go prove the man right by spoiling your ballot paper by drawing a big cock on it, or writing some obscenity, and thinking it's oh so clever or not voting because you "don't like any of them".

Yeah, because when we all stop voting or drawing obscenities on our ballot papers we will get such a better government. Yup. That'll work.

"There is compulsory voting in Australia and it works."
Not for the people who dont want to vote I suspect. And not for the 6% of Australians who ruin their ballot paper on purpose as a protest.

Bluntness
FWIW I am on the side of everyone voting.

Give your vote to a politically aware 16-17 year old, or someone who lives and works here but is a foreign national and doesn't get to vote?

DON'T do this. That's illegal and fraudulent.

Give your vote to a politically aware 16-17 year old, or someone who lives and works here but is a foreign national and doesn't get to vote?

DON'T do this. That's illegal and fraudulent.

It's only fraudulent and illegal if the person in question tries to pass themselves off as you at your polling station. I meant that you should say to your chosen person "Look, I'm really not feeling this election and have no idea who to vote for. You might have stronger feelings than me - if you do, I'm happy to cast my vote according to your instructions"

Many people simply aren't interested in politics and are happy to leave elections to people who are.
In the same way many people aren't interested in baseball and don't care who wins the world series.

Yabu. What about the suffragettes? At least turn up and spoil your paper. That's what I did one year when I was annoyed by all the parties!

For the last 10 or so years of her very long life, my mother asked the oldest grandchild still under voting age how they wanted her to vote.

I'm feeling sorely tempted to spoil this time. Then again, in my safe seat, I may as well do my Lib Dem vote which has the value of a fart in the wind. But then that would be seen as endorsing some of their major policies that I don't agree with.

I will go down to the polling station because I'm not apathetic. At least a significant spoil rate tends to be associated with a higher proportion of the electorate who are not satisfied with what is on offer, rather than than total disengagement.

I don't expect any party to fully represent my political ideals, but the bus analogy is currently like accepting a bus that drops you off 10 miles away from where you want to be, half an hour after you needed to be there with an unlit walk through muddy fields to finish the journey.