A Word on the Local Election Results So Far

[miss_s_b]

Yes, the coalition parties got a drubbing. Yes, Labour won back lots of seats. But that's not the big story, and Labour would do well to resist the urge to rub Lib Dem faces in it (not that they are resisting, of course...). The big story of what happened yesterday was turnout. In most places it was less than 30%. LESS THAN 30%!

This is not a ringing endorsement of the Labour party, this is a big two fingers up to ALL politicians. It explains the Green wipeout in Cambridge when they had net gains overall, and came close to taking (for example) Birkenhead with over 40% of those who turned out voting for them. It explains the gains for Respect in Bradford - and we're already seeing hopes for all sorts, including saving the Odeon, attached to Respect, which I shall be very sad but very unsurprised to see dashed.

Triumphalist Labourites tweeting that (for example) in one ward in Hull they got 80-odd percent of the vote and intentionally not mentioning the turnout (18.7%) are 1, missing the point and 2, setting themselves up for a big fall. When you factor in turnout, that Hull ward was won by 15.7% of the vote. That's not something to crow about, not for politicians of ANY stripe.

The public hates us ALL. Yes, at the moment they detest the coalition parties more than Labour, but that won't last if Labour get in. Politicians of all parties need to be very worried indeed about the message that extremely low turnouts are sending us, because at some point there's going to be a really big upset if we don't. Possibly even if we do.

Comments

[andrewhickey.info]

The problem is that there can be no such thing as 'suitably secure electronic voting'. It's bad enough that we have postal votes, with the concommitant huge risk of fraud and coercion, but electronic voting would not only allow that to increase (abusive spouse or parent looking over someone's shoulder while they vote, or voting 'for' them) but given that over 90% of people use fundamentally insecure, buggy, virus-ridden operating systems to go on the internet, you'd basically be allowing any quarter-competent script kiddie, Russian mobster or unfriendly government to decide the election.

And even more importantly, democracy not only needs to be fair but needs to be *seen* to be fair. Even if the government decided to use only Free Software to run the voting on -- on every level of the machines from the bare metal up -- which would be the only way that an audit would be even theoretically possible (and what are the chances of that? I'd guess at slightly less than none), you still have the problem that there is no paper trail, and nobody can see the physical ballots. If a candidate thinks from the doorstep reaction that she's won, but then the other candidate gets a 10,000-vote majority, what steps can she take to reassure herself? None -- she just has to trust a black box.

The Electoral Reform Society -- who would have every reason to support it, since they make money from their Electoral Reform Services company, which sells voting machines for those organisations that actually want them -- are against electronic voting for all these reasons.

What will get people to vote is believing that their vote makes a difference. That can only be achieved if the major parties stop trying to occupy the same millimetre-square area of 'centre ground' and actually give people a reason to prefer one over another (and yes, I think the Lib Dems are by far the best in that regard, but we've been heading in the wrong direction at least since Ming's leadership, if not before, and need to turn round and start making our differences more obvious), or if there's an electoral system that will allow smaller parties to actually get some representation.

Note that in Scotland, even though turnout was a 'record low', it was still above 40% whereas in general it was less than 30%. I can't help but believe that that's because in Scotland there is both a better voting system (STV) for councils and a viable non-big-three party to vote for.

In Manchester, on the other hand, where even when we've been doing well they've still always weighed the Labour votes in most wards, turnout was under 20% in many wards.

Electronic voting is one of those things that sounds like a solution to the problem, but really, really isn't...

[staceyuk]

I agree with this.

[purplecthulhu]

As do I.