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fearmeforiampinkSo, you've watched the Russel Brand video, and you're despairing about the state of our politics. Or you're just doing the latter without having done the former.
But you want to do something that will actually make a difference, which Brand's call to arms of "Hey, don't bother voting!" will utterly fail to do. How can you get active, change things?
As someone who works in the area of democratic reform, I thought I'd try and put together a list of things you can get involved in to make a difference. (I'll note that this is just me personally doing this, due to I've seen a few friends asking what they can do - it's not anything official from any organisation). I do honestly believe that if more people got involved in these sorts of areas, it would help improve the system.
Will it be an instant change? No, theses sorts of things are a case of pushing over the long term, changing how people look at things. But the more people pushing, the more change will be achieved.
I'll start off with organisations you can get involved in, that are trying to fix politics:
— Unlock Democracy. http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk / https://www.facebook.com/unlockdemocracy
I'm biased, because this is the organisation I work for. UD campaigns for democracy, rights and freedoms. At the moment the concentration is on the (awful) lobbying bill that's going through parliament, but there's also stuff on local democracy, plus lords, electoral and constitutional reform. Local Works ( http://www.localworks.org ) is one of UD's projects, which works on giving people more power in their communities, and there's legislation they're part of that allows local communities to make changes that help their local area — one of the proposals there is to let local people call for their councils to be elected by a proportional system.
What can you do to get involved? There are regular 'speak out' campaigns where you can write to your MP through the website, and express your views on legislation. Whilst MPs are increasingly ignoring the petitions that take people two seconds to sign, they do notice personally written letters from their constituents, as they're the people that care enough to vote them in and out. There are also local groups across the country ( http://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/pages/local-groups ) where people can get involved in the local area, campaigning on local issues, but also having public meetings and other events to draw attention to national issues.
— The Electoral Reform Society. http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk / https://www.facebook.com/electoralreformsociety
ERS concentrates on electoral reform, but covers stuff from votes at 16, the problems of things like Safe Seats (where it's near impossible to unseat the incumbent MP or councillor), and other matters around the problems with our votes.
— Bite the Ballot. https://www.facebook.com/bitetheballot
They're the people who made the video I shared responding to Brand. They concentrate on educating & engaging young people in politics — making them votes worth winning.
— Republic. www.republic.org.uk
They're somewhat concentrated on getting rid of the monarchy, but they also call for a constiitution for the country. They do well at making their points when stuff on the monarchy comes up, and they're after activists around the country to be visible in doing just that.
— Reform Groups Network. http://reformgroups.net/site-list
A site for local groups that are pushing for reform to say what they're doing, how to get involved, and to share good ideas.
There are plenty of other organisations that focus on specific areas like the Open Rights Group ( http://www.openrightsgroup.org ) who have a particular focus or cause that they're concentrating on, and they're also good for putting your time, effort and support into.
What about the political parties? I think there's two ways to go; there are alternative political parties, or there's getting involved in the major parties and trying to fix them from within. On the former, I know people say that those parties make no difference, but I'd argue that's not true — in 1989, the Greens got 15% overall of the European Parliament vote, and whilst that didn't get them any seats, it made the major parties suddenly had to treat environmentalism a lot more seriously; that was when they all started including greener policies. I think that can happen again.
I was going to include a list of alternative political parties here, but having thought about it, I'll be honest — they're not my area, and I don't want to advocate causes at people when I can't back up their worth. I invite people to make suggestions on parties that are worth supporting in the comments here, though.
The other option is to get involved in the existing parties, and make a change there. People are likely to laugh at that, aren't the parties the problem? But one of the issues is the way that people have disengaged from the parties, making it easier for the heads there to do what they want. The way the membership of the parties has dropped, if people started joining them again en masse, and calling for specific changes, then the parties would have to sit up and take notice.
So, there you go. That's my thoughts, my suggestions for how to make a difference. I think there are real issues with things how they are, we need change, but I think the way to make that change is to get engaged, to actually *do* something to make that change happen. And if all the people who aren't happy with things did get involved in making those changes, we would see the difference it'd make. If anyone else has any suggestions for groups or points to add, I'm very willing to edit them in.
But you want to do something that will actually make a difference, which Brand's call to arms of "Hey, don't bother voting!" will utterly fail to do. How can you get active, change things?
As someone who works in the area of democratic reform, I thought I'd try and put together a list of things you can get involved in to make a difference. (I'll note that this is just me personally doing this, due to I've seen a few friends asking what they can do - it's not anything official from any organisation). I do honestly believe that if more people got involved in these sorts of areas, it would help improve the system.
Will it be an instant change? No, theses sorts of things are a case of pushing over the long term, changing how people look at things. But the more people pushing, the more change will be achieved.
I'll start off with organisations you can get involved in, that are trying to fix politics:
— Unlock Democracy. http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk / https://www.facebook.com/unlockdemocracy
I'm biased, because this is the organisation I work for. UD campaigns for democracy, rights and freedoms. At the moment the concentration is on the (awful) lobbying bill that's going through parliament, but there's also stuff on local democracy, plus lords, electoral and constitutional reform. Local Works ( http://www.localworks.org ) is one of UD's projects, which works on giving people more power in their communities, and there's legislation they're part of that allows local communities to make changes that help their local area — one of the proposals there is to let local people call for their councils to be elected by a proportional system.
What can you do to get involved? There are regular 'speak out' campaigns where you can write to your MP through the website, and express your views on legislation. Whilst MPs are increasingly ignoring the petitions that take people two seconds to sign, they do notice personally written letters from their constituents, as they're the people that care enough to vote them in and out. There are also local groups across the country ( http://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/pages/local-groups ) where people can get involved in the local area, campaigning on local issues, but also having public meetings and other events to draw attention to national issues.
— The Electoral Reform Society. http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk / https://www.facebook.com/electoralreformsociety
ERS concentrates on electoral reform, but covers stuff from votes at 16, the problems of things like Safe Seats (where it's near impossible to unseat the incumbent MP or councillor), and other matters around the problems with our votes.
— Bite the Ballot. https://www.facebook.com/bitetheballot
They're the people who made the video I shared responding to Brand. They concentrate on educating & engaging young people in politics — making them votes worth winning.
— Republic. www.republic.org.uk
They're somewhat concentrated on getting rid of the monarchy, but they also call for a constiitution for the country. They do well at making their points when stuff on the monarchy comes up, and they're after activists around the country to be visible in doing just that.
— Reform Groups Network. http://reformgroups.net/site-list
A site for local groups that are pushing for reform to say what they're doing, how to get involved, and to share good ideas.
There are plenty of other organisations that focus on specific areas like the Open Rights Group ( http://www.openrightsgroup.org ) who have a particular focus or cause that they're concentrating on, and they're also good for putting your time, effort and support into.
What about the political parties? I think there's two ways to go; there are alternative political parties, or there's getting involved in the major parties and trying to fix them from within. On the former, I know people say that those parties make no difference, but I'd argue that's not true — in 1989, the Greens got 15% overall of the European Parliament vote, and whilst that didn't get them any seats, it made the major parties suddenly had to treat environmentalism a lot more seriously; that was when they all started including greener policies. I think that can happen again.
I was going to include a list of alternative political parties here, but having thought about it, I'll be honest — they're not my area, and I don't want to advocate causes at people when I can't back up their worth. I invite people to make suggestions on parties that are worth supporting in the comments here, though.
The other option is to get involved in the existing parties, and make a change there. People are likely to laugh at that, aren't the parties the problem? But one of the issues is the way that people have disengaged from the parties, making it easier for the heads there to do what they want. The way the membership of the parties has dropped, if people started joining them again en masse, and calling for specific changes, then the parties would have to sit up and take notice.
So, there you go. That's my thoughts, my suggestions for how to make a difference. I think there are real issues with things how they are, we need change, but I think the way to make that change is to get engaged, to actually *do* something to make that change happen. And if all the people who aren't happy with things did get involved in making those changes, we would see the difference it'd make. If anyone else has any suggestions for groups or points to add, I'm very willing to edit them in.
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no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 07:20 pm (UTC)It depends on your view of useful. I mean a lot of people say "spoil your paper instead of not voting". Indeed I know a lot of people who rigorously do this.
Except in extreme and rare circumstances voting is only ever a message. It's never (nearly never) *useful* in the sense of changing who gets in.
So I guess we have a fundamental disagreement on what makes a vote useful.
I would rather have voted for the correct candidate (for me) who doesn't get in than have voted for the least worst candidate who does. If the candidate who gets in is down at my 3rd or 4th choice I likely don't give much of a hoot anyway.
your vote makes no difference, so you say "They're all equally bad", throw your hands in the air
Well, in my case, I've looked at a lot of voting systems, considered what their results mean in practice and made a habit of trying to work out the various answers using the different ones. And then said "they're all equally bad"... or within a delta of equally bad.
PR systems (some at least) have nice theoretical properties which are interesting and we should use those but you know, the main reason we should use them is so that people can spend their time debating what is actually wrong with politics because a lot of people are tying up time on this one.
All the changes to voting systems in the world won't change:
1) The nature of how political and moral issues are debated.
2) The nature of the kind of people who enter politics in a modern setting.
3) The nature of political reportage and how this feeds back to our actions and attitude towards politicians.
4) The nature of the lobbying system and how political influence is traded.
Those things require change which is outside the voting system (which is, after all, an extremely crude form of feedback mechanism, even with the most nuanced multi-vote multi-candidate PR system.)
But we don't need to debate this because we can see it from data. Plenty of countries have PR -- they also have corrupt politicians, disaffected voters, very similar political parties. Other countries have FPTP and have more honest politicians, widely differing political parties, engaged voters and a sense you're making a genuine choice.
Offering PR to someone who wants an actual and meaningful change to the political system is like offering a glass of water to someone saying "my house is on fire".
no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 07:52 pm (UTC)Which doesn't mean that we won't see reform without that - we clearly have seen all sorts of reforms while using FPTP - and will presumably continue to do so. And it doesn't make voting reform my number 1 wish - it just makes it something that's important to me - because I want to see higher engagement with politics, and more people making demands of the political system.
Because we have democracy because people have a tacit agreement that it's better to go along with the majority decision than it is to shoot the people in charge and take over, and if we discourage enough people from engaging then eventually the latter route starts to look very appealing to them.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 08:24 pm (UTC)I want to see higher engagement with politics, and more people making demands of the political system.
The best studies I can find do in fact show that PR increases turnout which surprise me -- but not a huge amount -- for example, political parties spending a lot on their campaigns has more of an effect.
http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&cad=rja&ved=0CHYQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wzb.eu%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Fpersonen%2Fgeys.benny.328%2Felectoral_studies_25_4.pdf&ei=WRdwUsy0AcSI0AWCiYH4CA&usg=AFQjCNHIvmA7xt3dt05qRPq98Kekyt35gA&sig2=LXwSihIEoWHY1XPj56Bvpg&bvm=bv.55123115,d.d2k
the latter route starts to look very appealing to them.
Indeed. And when the shooting people and taking over route starts to look appealing, a well-intentioned offer to fiddle with how votes are counted makes it look even more appealing.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 08:49 pm (UTC)Yes, I'm of the opinion that a preferential and proportional system would change things significantly, as it would allow for signal votes, so you can make your views known whist still affecting the final result, it would considerably change the makeup of the Commons, and the nature of the parties.
But I'm also very much of the opinion that that's not the only thing to be done — whilst ERS does some very good work, there's a reason I throw my weight more behind campaigns that cover a broader range of things, that want more transparency, that are pushing to give local government more ability to do things, that wants to bring in things like recall, and again, things like Bite the Ballot for education and engagement.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 08:51 pm (UTC)But look, this experiment has been done. You can argue until you're blue in the face that PR will change things significantly. Then I can point at countries who already have it and go "well, this is what it works out to when you get it" -- it's different but it's not qualitatively different. It's marginal. If you do detailed statistical analysis you can find that it slightly brings up voter turnout -- but you do need detailed analysis.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 09:45 pm (UTC)http://www.yale.edu/leitner/resources/docs/2001-14.pdf
Although the effect is largely in closed list PR systems - because people high up in the party can be guaranteed re-election, unless the party suffers total collapse.
Which is one of the reasons that I've heard STV favoured - because that way you _can_ vote for people, rather than parties (although I'm sure that many people vote a party line).
Ooh, and it looks like when there are 3 or more electable parties corruption is worse for FPTP:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379411000564
There seems to be a lot of research in this. Oh for a politics researcher!
no subject
Date: 2013-10-29 10:06 pm (UTC)The thing is we should argue for proportional representation as a "good thing" in itself. It increases people's direct democratic influence and I believe this is an end in itself.
People who rest their claims for PR on things like "it will increase participation" (turns out it does) or "it will get us less corrupt politicians" (maybe it doesn't) are risking having the rug pulled out with results like that. I remember a while back an argument with someone convinced that PR would increase a countries economic success because people would have more direct control over which party ran the economy. (Now I don't think even if the electorate had all studied economics at LSE they would be able to well predict which party would be best for the economy... they can vote for the one they *think* is but they've no good chance of being right.)
PR is the right thing to do because the result it gives is closer to the result desired by the people voting.