How not to vote

by Deborah Taylor

Voting is your duty and your right. And it's easy. Really easy. The hard part can be deciding who to vote for. If you decide not to vote, Debs explains how you can at least do it as a political statement...

Voting is easy. Really easy. You just put your name on the electoral register and when you receive your ballot paper, turn up to the polling station and vote. If you go for a postal vote, you only need walk as far as the post box. It's that easy.

But not voting is an art, which is much maligned. You could be lead into thinking that it's no more difficult than just not voting. Staying in on that particular Thursday, drinking tea and watching Richard and Judy. Ignoring the whole bally thing and thinking the better for it.

But that is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong and once more for good luck, wrong. You may have heard a lot about voter apathy. Every time there's an election, the figures for voter turn out are trotted out and the fact that they are diminishing is cited as fact that people just don't care about politics any more. Apathetic to the whole thing. Too bloody lazy to get off their spotty arses and do something about it. Which is possibly true of some people.

But not you, the politically savvy mook that you are.

The thing is, there's not many of the political parties that are really worthy of your vote. Most of them are self-serving liars. Cheats. Devious little shits who are out for nothing more than their own interests and bank balances and would sell their own grandmother for a peerage. It's all that power that has gone to their heads and made them forget their roots.

Which is, to a certain extent, true, but sitting around sipping tea and enjoying the odd Hob-Nob or two is not exactly going to help.

That's where the spoilt ballot comes into to its own. You see, every ballot paper put in the ballot box has to be counted and registered. Every one counts towards the total turn out and helps reverse this silly idea of voter apathy. Yes, that means that every one of those black crosses in the proper little box is counted and the one who gets the most gets to sit in Parliament and shout insults at the other side. But it also means that every bit of paper that says "fuck democracy" or some such sentiment is counted too.

And what better way to protest against the ineptitude of the democratic process? Which do you think makes the bigger impact on the people that need this impacting upon? The continued decline in people turning up to the ballot box to put a cross next to the name of another faceless non entity? Or an increase in people turning up to make a point of telling people that it's exactly this sort of mockery in which they refuse to get involved?

So you see, not voting is your duty and your right. Abuse it proudly!

But what of you not yet old enough to vote? Next time, I'll start looking at other ways to get your voice heard.

Mookychick loves Politics:

• Introduction to politcs
• Politics and the class system
• What left wing and right wing mean
• How the vote came about and why you should maintain the tradition
• The (interesting) history of parliament
• How not to vote
• How to go on a protest march
• How to stay safe on a protest march
• Queer Mutiny - a new queer movement
• Restorative justice
• Ann Coulter - Femine, Famous and Fascist
• No to Proposition 8

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