Murphy's letter from Edinburgh

 

Votes for Sixteen Year Olds

Our Government has mooted the idea that the voting age should be reduced to sixteen olds in the future because the people who are of age are not using their votes.  More people have now opted out of the electoral system by not using their ballot papers.  Seventeen million people decided that the voting system was of no relevance to them, so they did not bother using their votes at the last general election.

The Government should be finding out why that amount of people didn't use their votes and why they felt so disenfranchised that it was not worth the effort rather than reducing the voting age.  I wrote the government in the early 1990s on the point of making voting compulsory, but the reply that I got was that this was undemocratic even though many other democratic countries use this system.

A lot of people see the voting system in this country as outdated and not representative of their views.  It's a case of you come out every four or five years, put your cross on your ballot paper and then wait for the next election to do the same.  The people casting their vote have no say whatsoever once their vote has been cast, and that may be why so many people have decided to opt out of the system of electing our government or councillors.

Children nowadays are more astute than the children of the previous generations, and that may be due to the electronics age of media information.  I believe that some will take up the challenges and responsibility of casting their vote if they are given it, but the biggest majority won't bother.

Our government needs to put politics in the school education system so that the people they are going to ask to vote for them know exactly what the electoral system is all about. And in most schools that is not the way it is done - they learn nothing about the political system at school because it is not part of the school education system.

I didn't have vote at the age of sixteen, and even if I had it at that age I still wouldn't have voted.  The reason for that was because I knew absolutely nothing about politics at that age.  Most people from my generation saw the Labour party as the working man's party and the Conservative and Unionist party as the party that did nothing for the working person, and it was often the family who told their children or friends who too vote for - and they've done it that way all their lives.

Times have changed with more opting out of the elections in this country which is unhealthy for any democracy, and that needs too change.  A question on the ballot paper with a tick box stating none of the above would let us see if the election system needs to be changed, but so would spoiling your paper which is already an option that those voting can already use if they don't want too vote for any of the parties on the ballot paper.

What we need to do is get the electorate into the polling station in the first place, and we are failing with that.  That may be because once you vote for the government, you are no longer needed until the next election.  Most people who put their cross on their ballot paper play no pro-active roll in politics at all and some of the time they don't even know what the governments policies are in the first place.

They get a few leaflets through the door telling them what each party is going to do for them and what they stand for.  Some may even watch the television to see what the political parties are standing for.  But that's as far as it goes with the ordinary electorate.  I have never been a member of any political party, and the reason for that is that I remain totally neutral and I can vote for whoever I want without a party kicking me out for not voting the way that they want me to vote - and that's the way it will remain.

Often the party in government sets out their stall and they tell you what they are going to do before the elections.  But once the votes are cast the new government often starts changing its policy by making it up as they go along.  They then wonder why less people are casting their votes.

We need too get those already registered for their vote to vote before reducing the age group.  Making it compulsory is an option that works in many countries despite our governments protestation that it is undemocratic. But I still think that this is the road that we should move down.

We can't tell other countries how good democracy is when such a large amount of people in this country fail to fill in their ballot papers leaving it to those who do use their votes to have all the say in what goes on in politics.  I will always use my vote as long as I live because it is my right

If only we could get those who don't vote to think the same way.

Written by: Andrew Murphy Thursday 28 February 2006

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