trashleg said:
SamuelRSmith said:
trashleg said:
i agree with scifi boy, but voter apathy is a difficult thing to deal with. i hate that a party can become government with less than even 40% of the vote, because technically 60% DON'T want that party.. so thats almost anti-democracy, lol.
but like i said its tricky. if you dont vote, then... *shrugs* you take what you're given, i suppose. and you cant bitch about it later. |
So because they didn't vote, you assume that they automatically didn't want the winner to win?
If you don't vote because you don't care who governs you, or you feel confident that your party of choice will win the election without your vote, then I see no problem in the Government operating with a less than 50% share of the vote (and how often would more than 50% of the entire electorate vote for the same thing, anyway?).
If, however, you don't vote because you feel that your vote is wasted, or because you don't like any of the parties, then that's the issue... but again, apathy is not the answer. The only way to solve these issues is to become less-apathetic than a voter, get out there, and try and work towards making the system better.
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naw, thats not what i meant. what i meant was that in elections where the winning party actually have a really small percentage (ie less than half) of the votes, you could argue that more than half didnt want that party.
scotland uses proportional representation, which they say is fairer.. i havent studied politics for 2 years though, its fuzzy.
i agree that it should be taught in schools though, considering how big a role the government play in life now.
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Scotland don't PR, they use something called Additional Member System, it's a combination between First Past the Post and Proportional Representation, it also happens to be my favourite form of electoral system.
fyi, Labour actually received around 20% of the electorate's support last election (if you factor in non-voters), and yet they won over 50% of the seats.
The issue is that the way we elect our representatives hasn't evolved in line with the way that the representatives group themselves (ie - FPP is the perfect system for electing independents, but, as parties started to form, the system's weaknesses began to appear).
