They say the Scottish independence movement is having success on at least one front: they’re rounding up people who haven’t bothered to register to vote or who normally wouldn’t vote. Having found them, they’re hopeful they can persuade them to vote Yes in September. It’s expected that voter turn-out on 18 September will be spectacular – over 80%. Or put it another way: on a matter which affects Scotland’s future in a root-and-branch way, around one-fifth of people won’t bother voting. And only 20% not voting will be considered an amazingly good turn-out.
Here, where politics confronts us in one form or another at every turn, voter numbers are slipping. In 1998, the Assembly elections had a 69.9 % turn-out; in 2003 it had gone down to 63.9%, in 2007 it was 62.9%, and in the last general election here the turnout was 57.6%. You can see how voter apathy is deepening.
One of the interesting things about the rise of Sinn Féin electorally in the North was that they did so not solely by winning over SDLP voters, as might have been expected. The SDLP turn-out figures remained more or less the same; Sinn Féin passed out their nationalist opponents by getting people who wouldn’t normally vote to come out on polling day.
It’s an odd phenomenon, the stay-at-homes. Traditionally, there are a number of groups who can’t summon up the will to make the walk from their armchair to the local polling station and scratch their X on the ballot paper. There’s the young: when you’re eighteen or in your early twenties, you’ve got at least three more important things to do: chasing girls/boys, consuming alcohol/drugs and/or listening to very loud music. Then there’s the poor. They stay at home because they don’t see the point. Whoever’s in power, they figure, it won’t matter: their lives will stay the threadbare same. Ironically, another sizeable group who give voting a miss because they think it’ll change nothing are the comfortably-off: what has come to be termed the Prod-in-the-garden centre – perhaps to be joined by the Taig-in-the-garden-centre. This group would rather check out anti-slug pellets for their roses than get their hands dirty voting.
It’s an unfortunate state of affairs, it’s observable throughout much of the Western world, and it’s something that renders the notion of democracy laughable. You may think the state of Northern Ireland, having been manufactured under threat of violence, isn’t a democratic place anyway; but when you then leave it to a minority of the voting population to call the shots, you’re adding a further layer of non-democracy.
There are two ways we can solve this problem: the carrot and the stick. That is, we can educate non-voters, show them how important every vote is (ask Michelle Gildernew – four votes – remember?). Or we could take the path chosen by countries like Australia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland,Turkey and over twenty others. In those countries they penalise people in different ways if they fail to show up at the polling booth on voting day. They do so because, as with wearing a seat-belt or making sure you’re sober when you sit behind a steering wheel, they think it’s too important a matter to be left to the whim of the individual. And if people say “But I want to vote for none of the above – they’re all a shower!” then it’s up to that individual to set up his/her own party or run as an independent and vote for themselves.
Not that voting every few years means that your democratic duties are completed. If you employ someone, pay their wages, you make good and sure they put their back into their work, step up to the mark, and you don’t wait four or five years before you voice your complaints. That’s what we all should be doing.
In a jurisdiction where the Deputy First Minister extends the hand of reconciliation to the head of a state which has inflicted centuries of suffering on Ireland, while the First Minister of that jurisdiction and the dolly-mixture assortment that is current unionism devote their time to working cheek-by-jowl with loyalist paramilitaries to ensure that the Parades Commission dances to their sectarian tune, there’s a massive need for active democrats. A need for people who will raise their voice and remind their servants ( and since we pay politicians, they’re our servants) that we’re not interesting in going back to Ballygobackwards again. Been there, done that. We need a fresh and better tomorrow, not a Groundhog nightmare yesterday.
Dr C
Not convinced on the ‘ye must vote’ idea.
It forces uninterested people to determine the outcome of something very important with minimal knowledge, to stick with your Australian example “I’ll vote for Tony Abbot because he has nice shoes…”
I’d rather those people went to the pub for the day rather than go out of their way and vote how TV/quirky appreciations tell them to vote.
As for bringing out the garden centre types, well, it’s a tricky one.
Ultimately, no matter how many of them vote there’ll still be a bunch of clowns up on the hill, all the they can hope for is a sensible Christian to enter the den of crazy lions.
NI21 was fresh (and self-strangled at birth).
Another unionist party that caters for ‘unionists’ (as opposed to Protestants who are unionist and automatically defend every aspect of pan-unionist-Orange culture regardless if breaches their principles) would be welcome.
As would a unification/all Ireland party that has none of the typical nationalist baggage (perfidious Albion, we’re-great-warriors-but-for-some-reason-have-been-oppressed-for-a-thousand-years, everything-is-England’s-fault-and-nothing-to-do-with-the-Catholic-church…)
I could vote for either of the above (nice shoes notwithstanding).
As for Scotland, well, an awful lot rests on that election.
If they vote yes, then they’re voting for uncertainty.
Irish nationalists are certain that everything will eventually be better in a UI (in part thanks to unionist actions, ironically).
Scottish nationalists are not so certain (well, not all of them).
But the Scottish unionists are certain everything will go tits-up, so, it’s ‘awl hans awn deckk’ in Scotland.
Good morning Jude….Sunday morning .The sun is shining .The birds are stealing my breakfast strawberries. The door’s wide open to the world .Take a long deep breath and enjoy!!! I think….
Well , what can i say .you are right of course. That’ll be the next Big Idea I think . They brought in the seat belts…they booted all the smokers outside to yap on the footpaths.They can start again . dissolve this lot now and take heart
.This is not the end. When the holiday is over and these currently useless political buggers try to return for the next pay cheque from the Stormont Gravy Train …well just have the place locked up . The gates would be chained up and the letters and dismissal e-mails would all be sent out. Big “Not Fit For Purpose” notices would be winging their way to all the current politicians.
That would be that …We would let that field lie fallow for a year or two to get our breath back and have no blathering politicians baaing and burbling on the airwaves…I know we’ll have little to write about….but…..
Then Westminster and Dublin bring out a law immediately , that in two years time there will be New Elections for a whole New Assembly. This time everyone would be required to “Vote By Law”…
.A whole new concept to fix Northern Ireland , supported throughout the UK and the rest of Ireland. Then we’d actually know for the first time on Planet Norn Ireland , what the people actually really wanted.
I don’t know about you Jude, but in my lifetime I have had to do “Jury Duty” in the courts of our land on three separate occasions….I had to suspend my life and run off to Newry nearly every day for a month…find a parking space and go to court..I also did it in my home town .Once i had to do it while I was looking after my uncle who was dying that year.
I stress that “I HAD to do it” .. There was no if , but or maybe about any of it. I didn’t get a free pass because i had one of those jobs , like a nurse or whatever which had built- in exemption. When the summons to duty arrived in the post I had to go and when the judge took us all through the court process it was made abundantly clear that if anyone did not “Do Their Duty” , two stout constables from the Plod would be around to hustle them out of their warm beds and admonish and fine them…
That’s obviously the way to go to put some fire under our moribund political system . No question ….Now , I do realise that we could still end up with the same dumb collection of numbnuts governing us ….but by that time we’d know for sure that we only had ourselves to blame for the results…
It’s worth a try, I think…
Jude, a chara,
The first sentence of your last paragraph certainly caught the bleary-eyed attention of this dude in the Deep South of Dublin even as he stumbled to the closet where he fumbled for his cleanest dirty shirt, with, all the while, Sunday Morning Coming Down:
‘In a jurisdiction where the Deputy First Minister extends the hand of reconciliation to the head of a state who had inflicted centuries of suffering on Ireland….’.
That you should be so lucky in the Wee Six.
On Friday a new Deputy First Minister was elected in the Free Southern State, only down here it is called …..An Tanaiste. (The Cupla Fuckle is still indelibly embossed on the buckle of the belt of Honeysuckle Joan, for it is she).
This is how she answered the first question (a three-parter) asked at her inaugural Press Conference (it dealt with the possibility of forming a new political alliance after the next Election):
Q1: Will you, or will you not, be prepared to make the Beast with Two Backs with Sinn Fein/IRA.
A: Out !
Q2: Will you, or will you not, be prepared to make the Beast with Two Backs with Sinn Fein?
A: Out !
Q3: Will you, or will you not, be prepared to make the Beast with Two Backs with (deep breath) the political party with THE biggest mandate in the entire island of Ireland, from Bantry Bay to Derry Quay and from Galway Bay to Dublin Town.
A: Out !
Yawnaiste? Those bedroom eyes, that yawn-suppressing voice, that…….thatch.
making voting mandatory should be legal requirement in a fair and just society.apathy and disillusiinment cannot be the guiding factor for who gets elected.if everyone voted u should get a fairer consenus of broad based societal views .if your not voting against then ur passively accepting the failed status quo.this said australia returned a conservative governmnet .I hope proportiinal representation here would lead to a true refection of the peoples aspirations.as fpr democracy mob rule which brought u the first and second world wsrs plus vietnam afghanistan iraq syria the destruction and occupation of Palestine to name but a few is really a masque to hide the elite who manipulate power politics and violence in continued pursuit of wealth influence colonisation asset stripping and the new world order as defined by capitalist coporationalism.
I spent some time in Scotland recently and was impressed with the level of interest in relation to the debate about an Independent Scotland. Fra is correct when he refers to the elite who manipulate power. 432 estates in Scotalnd own half of private land. Oxfam Scotland has published evidence on income equality between poor people and wealthy people (1:273) There is also evidence of educational apartheid with fewer working class students gaining access to third level education. Save the Children published a report in 2013 which states that Scotland has some of the worst health inequalities in the European Community. These are just some of the issues that are being actively debated in Scotland. There is much food for thought in relation to the same issues in this part of the world.
Sunday Sequence provided interesting and refreshing condemnation about burning effigies of the Pope and other Catholic religious items on Eleventh night bonfires this year. This was certainly a step in the right direction. Unfortunately the meaningless mantra about a six minute march continues to be intoned without any critical analysis of the legitimacy being given to the Ulster Drugs Association and the U.V.F. in the context of the equally meaningless term, “a graduated response” to the Parades Commission determination. The world is watching on as political unionism refuses to engage with political opponents yet appears willing and able to do business with individuals who are determined to ensure that death, destruction and organised crime flourish in the north of Ireland.
There’s certainly an argument to be made for compulsory voting, even though there is the danger of a ‘nice shoes’ vote as outlined above by Am Ghobsmacht. That said, the person who votes on the basis of a candidate’s shoes has just as much of a right to a vote as the person who votes for a candidate’s economic policies. Educating the electorate should be a priority.
Demographic change means nothing if it does not translate into votes – the most recent elections have shown us this. The 18-25 year olds have other things on their minds, as well as being less settled, as a result of moving about for University, work etc. We all know what way the demographics are headed, but those elderly voting Unionists will continue to call the shots as long as Nationalist turnout remains so low.
I’m not sure that low turnout in the north specifically relates to a disillusionment with ussuns/themmuns style politics. Voter turnout is low across most Western democracies (we do live in one of those, don’t we? It can be hard to tell sometimes…) This could be construed as a vote of no confidence in the system, and a failure of western neoliberal democracy itself, but that’s another story for another day I think.
I can’t see Political Unionism going for mandatory voting though. I should imagine that even the most blinkered backwoodsman cannot help but be aware of the slow creep of societal and demographic change. Mandatory voting would only accelerate this process. Given that we appear to be witnessing increased Unionist/Loyalist ‘co-operation’ anything that looks set to weaken their hand further will be met with the usual NO NOT AN INCH NO NO NO rhetoric, I suspect.
Collins states that “Sinn Féin passed out their nationalist opponents by getting people who wouldn’t normally vote to come out on polling day” – if Sinn Féin really want to move things up a gear they need to start appealing to those who would have traditionally voted for Unionist parties. Can young Protestants really feel comfortable voting for racist, homophobic creationists?
Well RJC…What makes you think that young Protestants will not be every bit as homophobic,racist or bigoted as their elders ?Age has never had much to do with any of those things.Way back when we were teenagers in the 1960’s , for every wee mod or hippy with a sharp suit and a witty line there was a mirror image in some wee skin headed boot boy who wanted to cut or kick something. Some things have more to do with background, information and plain innate intelligence than anything else.Our politicians didn’t get stupid overnight.That’s the box they came in.I’m sure there are plenty of wee young stupid creationists waiting there in the wings to swell the voting ranks of those mad unionists who think that men have one rib less than women because god took one out to make a woman.Well… Let’s face it they haven’t .Adam’s Rib is a fairy story , but try telling that to some of these people.