THE PROBLEM WITH NOT VOTING: Or The Need to Make Voting Threatening Again

I have always been a passionate advocate of voting. Indeed I have often fiercely argued with those who dismiss voting as at best irrelevant at worst even harmful. That said, like Russell Brand and Jeremy Paxman, I did not vote at the last election.

I had up until then voted at every general and local election since February 1974. In 2010 I had felt I could no longer vote at a General Election for the Labour Party, and there were no other options for me on the ballot paper. In short I had grown sick of voting for a Party that I watched shredding civil liberties year after year. Casting my ballot felt increasingly felt like providing the Labour Party with a blank cheque. I was not happy not voting but a spoilt ballot paper felt like the ultimate admission of impotence a tick in the ‘none of the above’ box would have been preferred, but no such option existing I chose to abstain.

When ever you watch parliamentary debate, and I do often, you are struck by several things, a) the unrepresentative nature of those present in the chamber, b) the poverty of debate, and c) the weakness of parliament in the face of corporate power. All of this strikes you fairly immediately and doesn't even encompass the corruption of lobbying and the effective securing of parliamentary support with financial inducements. The MP’s expenses scandal was in truth the least of it.

Those who campaigned for the right to vote would I think be truly shocked by this state of affairs. From North and Latin America, Australasia and Western Europe democratic intuitions are weak, often venal and self serving, either failing to hold the executive to account or as in the US held hostage by tiny corporate interests. All are dwarfed by the power of multi-national corporations, the annual turnover of many of which are greater than some countries annual GDP. Capitalism everywhere has undermined, castrated and marginalised democratic government. For an illustration of this you need only to consider the issue of tax avoidance. For all the entertainment value of witnessing Google, Starbucks and Amazon being lambasted in the stocks of a Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee meeting how much actually changed as a consequence? Starbucks, the chain most vulnerable to consumer pressure, ‘volunteered’ to cough up some money to the taxman! If anything the committee was a demonstration of parliamentary impotence.

A similar tale could be told of the energy utilities or water companies, or cowboy outfits like G4S. One thing though has not been said loudly and clearly enough, privatising basic services is incompatible with any sort of meaningful democracy.

Which brings me back to the franchise; I do not believe the silly line that ‘they are all as bad as each other,’ that elections are fought between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. An active member of the Labour Party for many years I can testify that many members are sincerely fighting for a better society and believe that parliament represents the most effective institution to deliver this. I am also convinced that there are members of other political parties, even the Conservatives, who hold equally sincere beliefs. The same holds true across the democratic world. However those who sincerely support the Republican or Conservative parties are, unwittingly or not, supporting front organisations. Don’t believe me, then just follow the money as they say in all Hollywood movies.  

Nor do I believe that parliament is wholly impotent, I believe that MP’s can sometimes make a difference, can improve the lives of ordinary citizens and equally, as with measures such as the Bedroom Tax, reduce many people’s lives to misery. Parliamentary power is though extremely limited, constituting at best a tinkering at the margins.[1] This is the inevitable consequence of the decision taken by Social Democrats at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century to abandon revolutionary ideals and adopt a reformist agenda.

Given the fate of those who chose the revolutionary road it could be argued that the pragmatic reformism of the likes of Bernstein and Kier Hardie represented a more correct understanding of history. Certainly, after the Second World War, when capitalism was at it weakest in Western Europe, major gains were made by democratic institutions for the working classes and organised labour.

However as capitalism began to recover its vigour these gains have gradually been rolled back, assisted by governments of the right, allied to international capital. Now with organised labour massively weakened and what used to be called ‘the commanding heights of the economy’ firmly in corporate hands, democratic institutions have become demonstrably feeble and ineffective. The growing privatisation of services  has continued the process of dismantling democratic accountability.

For those on the margins of society voting and the trappings that go with it have always felt irrelevant to their lives, now the numbers who feel that way are growing toward a critical mass, with turnouts at some elections reaching as low as 30%.[2] At levels like this the electoral mandate becomes discredited.

 It is not, as some with a very sinister agenda seek to propagate that people are apathetic and don’t care, they are not. They are cynical and angry and not convinced, -with good reason, -that voting will make much of a difference in their lives.

All of this would be deeply depressing if democracy was only about voting, fortunately it is not. Voting is in fact only one aspect of being engaged in the democratic process, and a relatively small one at that. For a decline in the numbers bothering to vote has run in parallel with radical increases in those engaging in single interest pressure groups like Greenpeace or radical direct action movements like UK Uncut. Whilst at a local level issues from library closures to fracking can give birth to political activism and direct action. Students too are once again discovering levels of political consciousness in the face of poor employment prospects, soaring fees and an aggressive and now openly hostile establishment.[3] Suggesting voting as the primary mechanism for channelling ones political hopes and aspirations is now palpably risible. Everywhere the democratic process, from student fees to the reorganisation and privatisation of the NHS, represents a betrayal of promises made and contracts entered into; yet the government acts as if it were soberly carrying out actions mandated by the people.

Add to the mix the childish behaviour, greed, venality and sheer puffed up self importance of so many MP’s and you have a recipe for complete disenchantment with representative democracy.

“If voting changed anything they would abolish it!”

Indeed and across the world that, whenever electoral politics from Chile to Russia threatened fundamental change, is precisely what they did.

Activism threatens, voting currently does not and as numbers of those voting steadily decline it gradually becomes less threatening. Politicians are only frightened of those who turn out in large numbers to vote. They piss on the young, the unemployed and the poor precisely because there are no votes in seeking to address their grievances. On the other hand they are obsequious and frightened of the middle classes and the elderly precisely because they vote.

In needs to be understood that, with the exception of those on the democratic left, politicians don’t really care about low turnout, provided it does not touch derisory levels. Election strategies are based on wooing tiny numbers in key marginal seats, the rest of the electorate simply do not matter. A great number of MP’s sit in for what are in reality modern forms of rotten borough, the ‘safe’ seat. Such seats are of course only ‘safe’ because so many of the electorate can be relied upon not to cast their vote.

The problems facing a living breathing representative democracy are immense. One of those problems, and far from the most significant, is low turnout at election. People believing that voting doesn’t change anything; this becoming a self fulfilling prophecy as parties can afford to ignore those who do not vote.

One way of challenging this cancerous sclerosis would be to make voting threatening again. Apple carts galore are there for the upsetting. All that is required is some organised campaigning, the targeting of a few ‘safe’ seats, the election of a few feisty independents, turning safe seat bastions into marginals. Then watch the ripples disturb the complacent Westminster pond.

Voting is only the start or indeed end point of representative democracy, and in many ways the least significant, but it is not insignificant as the young can attest. This is why Clegg is so nervous about student activism in his Sheffield constituency; it is why the government is attempting to silence campaigning groups and charities through legislation currently going through parliament.

One of the problems of not voting is that it firmly guarantees the election of small unrepresentative cliques who wave their supposed ‘mandate’ in the face of the poor and marginalised like soiled underwear.

Of course if voting did truly become threatening to the vested interests of corporate capitalism those interests would fight back viciously, as they did in Chile in 1973. Then democracy would need to be defended, such a defence would truly give meaning and reality to a concept that currently feels as hollow as a drainpipe.  

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[1] Local and regional government in the UK is even more enfeebled. Local boroughs enjoying les power, control and autonomy than your average cricket club.

[2] Even lower in some  recent elections for local police commissioners.

[3] For a description of this process see Paul Mason ‘Why it’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere,’ Verso 2013.

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