I miss voting

It’s local election day -- and, of course, I have voted, in a way. I learned very young from a radical mother that women had only recently fought for suffrage and that it was little short of a crime not to use the right. So use it I do.

But nowadays I use it on the kitchen table, with a postal vote. It takes rather less time than going down to the polling station, which is why I opted for it. But actually the opaque instructions they give you, the complicated system of envelopes (two of them A and B) and the declaration that you have to sign, means that the saving is less than you think. I also half suspect that several of my previous postal votes will have been invalidated because I put the wrong piece of paper into the wrong envelope.

The real problem, though, is that on this system voting becomes a very low key experience – done over a bottle of wine, and a jolly chat with the husband about the merits of the various candidates (or in our case about the merits of the Lib Dem and the renegade Lib Dem now standing as an Independent -- I opted for the former; he did too, I think, but confidentiality here is still the rule).

All this is a far cry from walking to the polling station in the redundant school down the road, passing the friendly copper and the party reps taking your number, declaring your identity to the officials, going into the little booth, putting a cross with your pencil and finally folding the piece of paper up and slipping it into that battered tin box.

Even I could never do that without a bit of a shudder of civic responsibility and sense of occasion.

All of which makes me think that the New Labour ideas of encouraging us to vote by making it easier (postally, on-line, at the supermarket, by text) are terribly misconceived. If you want people to take voting seriously, you don’t make it an everyday event; you let it continue to be part of a moving, even inconvenient, ritual of citizenship.

And you certainly stop people like me thinking that they can save a few minutes by not trooping down to the polling station and doing it all by post. Meanwhile you give up those silly symbolic substitutes that Gordon Brown has in mind, like saluting the flag. It’s not hard to foresee a nightmare future in which none of us vote, but we all have a Union flag loyally fluttering in the front garden.

Other cultures do, and did, this better. My anthropologist daughter put me on to some great work by one of her tutors on the ritualization of voting in Indian democracy. And, of course, the Romans knew that voting worked by making it an occasion that you had to give up time for.  In their case, it probably took a whole day, waiting for your turn to go up on the “bridge” to cast your vote.

I think on balance I’d be prepared to give up the convenience of the kitchen table vote if we could just recapture some of that mystical shudder of going into the polling booth and being a fully enfranchised citizen. Citizenship is, after all, supposed to take time. And that’s what my Mum wanted and valued, and was prepared to give almost anything for.

Comments

[Jane]

Re Orwellian government and the Post Office network: someone else feels the same. There's a letter in the Times today: "Post Office Sadness" making similar point.

[Jane]

Lucy
My conspiracy theory works like this:
Govt used to pay pensions and benefits through the post office network. Then they compulsorily transferred all that business to bank accounts direct. Then they said "Post offices aren't doing enough business. We will close large numbers of them."
Now, my prediction is that Govt will create big demand for on-line and postal voting, so people will use ballot box less. Then Govt will say "No more ballot boxes, sorry, costs too much to man them and clean up afterwards."
I do have a very, very 1984-Animal Farm bad opinion of this Government, and have suspicions about it big-time.
Rant over. Our Post Office is just like yours, mainly used by old people and people without cars.
Thanks for your appreciation!

[ushekim]

Before London was unliveable, a quid for a cup of Chinese tea? Now, it is unavoidable because the rest of world will watch with interest of the idiot stepping on shit, day in and day out. One word for this mess, Miliband.

[Michael Bulley]

To Paracelsus: I partly agree with you. I was always in favour of Britain's having a woman Prime Minister, if only it hadn't been Margaret Thatcher. Similarly, I'm all for a mayor of London who supports the learning of Latin and Greek, if only it weren't Boris Johnson!

[Paracelsus]

Don't be such a bore, Mr. Bulley - if Labour's hard core had its way, the Classics would be banned as elitist, and any suspicious characters who, like yourself, were found to have a penchant for epigrams would be up against the wall. It is, rather, a day to be marked with a white stone!

[Lucy]

Jane, "use it or lose it" is a bit out of order, I think. The PO in my village is to be closed, despite the fact that, out of the total population of villages it serves, a huge proportion do use the service. It's just that they're (apparently) not enough people in total. I know it may sound a bit boringly earnest to make a point of this, but I know these people and quite a lot of them are elderly and find it really important to be able to walk to get the milk and the paper (and a chat). If it goes, so does the tacit support system for those people who are familiar faces. This really isn't 'like' voting, nor (so far as I know) have the same arguments been advanced.

Rant over - sorry. But I do like your posts (and on Alphamummy!), and esp. re. Mr. Francis. Please - linking to Wiki is like putting up a big sign saying 'I dunno but I bin told...'

[Michael Bulley]

Londinienses ad urnas ierunt. Si Johnson uincet, mox cupient inesse.

[Tony Francis]

Dear PL: The Electoral College provides a firewall against election fraud under certain circumstances. Electoral votes are assigned according to census figures. They are the same as the number of Senators (two from each state) and the number of Representatives (varies by population). Look at Wyoming (the least populous state (pop: 522,000) with 3 electoral votes, and California (most populous) 36.5 million with 55 electoral votes: it means an electoral vote in Wyoming is controlled by 174,000 people, while an electoral vote in California is controlled by 670,000 people. This means a vote in Wyoming is theoreticaly worth 3.8 votes in California. In Kansas, population 2.6 million and 6 electoral votes, an electoral vote is worth 433,000 people. Therefore a vote in Kansas is worth about 1.5 votes in California. There is a story told of the 1960 election between Kennedy and Nixon. It came down to Illinois. Chicago (Democrat) was waiting for down-state (Republican) to report, so they knew how many votes to cobble. But down state was waiting for Chicago to report, so they knew how many votes to cobble. Down state reported first, then Chicago reported, and Kennedy (Democrat) won. I don't know if it is true, but it could be. Clearly, in many elections, the poplular vote wouldn't matter. But in really close ones, it could. As Chris Matthews of MSNBC said, "So the Daly machine in Chicago reported a billion votes for the Democrat, how would you ever disprove it?" This way, voter fraud is limited to the state. Of course, you are correct that little states would never go for getting rid of the Electoral College. Since more than half the population of the US lives in California, Texas, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Illinois, these would (in theory) decide every national election. Do you think dinky states like Rhode Island, or Delaware will give up any power? Probably not.
http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_College_%28United_States%29

[PL]

Tony Francis, I don't understand your "firewall" theory. Why should 100,000 fraudulent votes in one state cause less distortion because they might only determine which way that state goes in the Electoral College ( with possibly decisive results for the outcome) than if they were diluted into a general ("popular") vote of the whole nation?

As I'm sure you know, the Electoral College survives because it benefits the less populous states. Getting rid of it would require a constitutional amendment. Constitutional amendments require the votes of two thirds of the states. And well over a third of the states would not support such an amendment.

[anony]

Of course, the rationale for not voting is because, unlike some, you are not enamoured with the sound of your own voice; "Whoops. I hear myself, myself, myself. Methinks I am turning into a God."

[Tony Francis]

Concerning free photo IDs in Indiana: this had to be put into the law so that it would be constitutional. Otherwise, requiring a photo ID would be similar to a poll tax, which is unconstitutional. In most cases, a driver's license is all that would be needed. Concerning voter fraud, there are stories of illegal aliens, felons, dead people, etc voting. Nursing home residents (Alzheimer's,, et al) vote by mail, in total lockstep with the political views of the social worker who tends to them. A lawyer once told me that in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, etc., it is nothing to cook up 100,000 phony votes. This is a reason why the Electoral College will be around for the foreseeable future. Voter fraud in a big city is limited to one state. It is a kind of firewall. That same lawyer (who was big in Democratic party politics) told me the primary system was a disaster for the Democrat party. It is designed to pick the most unelectable candidate for the Democrats. Time will tell if this is true in 2008.

[Abracadabra]

Voting at my local polling station yesterday was such a pleasure. With the chewed pencil stubs, leaking roof, frisson of occasion and no mention of the ubiquitous ID, I rather felt like I was in a Kinks song helping to preserve a very, very valuable right.

[Susanne]

I note that in Indiana photo ID to allow one to vote can be obtained free of charge; in this country it's likely to be £100 or more.

[anthony alcock]

I have still not got round to becoming a German citizen, so I can vote only in relatively minor elections, those for the Foreigners Advisory Council (Ausländerbeirat) and city officials. We vote on a Sunday here, so after breakfast we toddle off to the local school (still in vibrant use) and do it. Any suggestion of saluting the flag in this country would probably precipitate another 1968.

[Gena]

I've just spent several hours sitting just outside a church hall in a small country town working as a teller during a county council election. There was a steady stream of voters who before and after casting their votes hung around talking. The four candidates (labour, lib dem, conservative and independant), all knew each other and most of the voters. Some elderly people who came in had clearly had to make a great deal of effort to get out and vote. The election was obviously giving people a chance to meet their neighbours and the candidates. Postal voting clearly lacks this human dimension and it is also easier for postal votes to be corrupted than a vote cast at a polling station where the voter makes a cross on a slip of paper privately before slipping it directly into the ballot box. As far as I am concerned the polling station is superior to the postal vote for these reasons.

[Jane]

Thanks, Tony.

[Tony Francis]

Dear friend Jane: The US Supreme Court ruled on April 28, 2008 that an Indiana law requiring photo ID of potential voters was constitutional, despite objections by the Democratic party of Indiana that this disenfranchized some voters. The case hinged on the fact that no such examples of hardship could be produced. Even such notable lefties as Justice Stephens supported this ruling. (There, you don't have to read the links - you have it from the horse's [or other some other kind of equine's] mouth.)

[Jane]

I've been to vote in my picturesque old English village, complete with thatched cottages and 12th century church.
I always see some old friends or current neighbours enjoying their democratic rights,and today was no exception.
Even the Conservative Party candidate was on hand, smartly dressed and smiling.
And my polling station is open from 7.00am to 10.00pm; this has been so ever since I can remember.
Anon, you need to complain. Use it or lose it! (Same goes for you, Mary). Like the post offices, where Govt took away great chunks of business and then said "Well, people don't use the post offices so we'll close them." Providing these non-attendance alternatives may well be a plot intended ultimately to close down expensive polling booths.
Dear old friend Tony Francis, I know you have encyclopaedic knowledge, but it's so much more fun to read a personal post. (Just like it's so much more fun to cast a personal vote). Can't always be bothered to click on the link.

[Tony Francis]

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/07-25.html

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/07-21.ZS.html

(Dutifully and fawningly submitted by a faithful, yelping comment writer.)

[Paracelsus]

Exactly so. Today I'll be doing my bit to elect a classicist in London - though I fear he may not be quite to your political taste...

[Anon]

Of course the problem is that the system of polling stations has not been reformed. My polling station is (or would be, as there are no elections for me this year) about fifteen miles from where I work in Cambridge, does not open until well after I have departed for the day and closes hours before I even leave the office.

The whole system is frankly outdated for the modern world. Not that using the ever so reliable post office is any better of course - I always end up taking my postal ballot in by hand as the only way to ensure delivery. Hardly convenient, but at least more so than the polling station.

[daphne sayed]

I, too,vote by post because I have trouble walking. However, this time I had to force myself to use my vote because it all seems so corrupt. at every level noses are in the trough. Years ago when my cousin was labour councillor in Sittingbourne; he didn't get any money but felt it was his civic duty to serve the community. I'd like those days back.

[Tony]

You are entirely right. Voting is important, valuable and serious. The little ritual of going to a special place and filling in the ballot paper in an enclosed polling booth underlines this and concentrates the mind. Postal voting should be there for those who for whatever reason are unable to vote in person but the rest of us - including you, Mary - should pitch up at the polling station.

[doggerel]

Well, Mary, why don't you go down to the polling booth while it's still there?
I've always felt a sense of history as I enter the portals of our smelly, damp old village hall (built circa 1920), take up the stubbed, ancient black pencil, and mark with a decisively archaic, pre-literate black cross, where I wish to make my voice heard.
This year, the village hall has been knocked down to be replaced by a new one. We will vote in the even more ancient (12th century) village church instead. I'm looking forward to it.