Vote people not policies
Apr. 6th, 2010 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lavendersparkleWell, the election date has been announced to the surprise of almost no-one. Even before Gordon Brown went to speak to the queen, lot of quizzes had appeared on the internet to tell you who you should vote for. Now, I'll admit it, I love these things as procrastination devises. I also agree that it's good to have a quick check that you're party does indeed support the kind of policies you support. Unsurprisingly, all of the quizzes so far have found that I'm a Green/Lib Dem, which is pretty accurate. I'm a Liberal Democrat but I'd probably give the Greens my second preference if we had a half way sensible electoral system.*
So I think that these quizzes are fun and they might be a good check and a good starting point but I'd like to give a few words of warning to anyone planning to decide their vote by ticky box.
1) The quizzes don't cover all issues. There's a limit to what will be covered in the quiz. If you particularly care about foreign policy to a particular country, or plans for a development in your local area or very particular reforms in the criminal justice system, the quiz you're taking might just not take that into account. This is even more likely if happen if you have a slightly unconventional set of views, such as a libertarian free market environmentalist.
2) A lot of what a government does isn't in their manifesto, if it was we could just vote for a set of policies and and save the expense of human beings. In the 2001 election no-one could foresee the September 11th attacks and the seismic impact they had upon British policy. You need to elect the people you trust the most to do the right thing in all of the unexpected situations which will arise in the next five years. For this reason you need to not just look at a party's policies, but also the ideology and world view which is underlying these policies and how that would play out in the event of a new armed conflict, a natural disaster, a disease pandemic, an economic crisis etc.
3) You elect a person not a party. That person can switch parties without standing for re-election and most MPs who aren't mindless careerists will have the odd issue where they decent from the party line. It's worth finding out what your actual candidates support, particularly if you care a lot about a particular issue and even more if that issue tends to be a free vote issue.
*Can you tell that I'm a Lib Dem?
So I think that these quizzes are fun and they might be a good check and a good starting point but I'd like to give a few words of warning to anyone planning to decide their vote by ticky box.
1) The quizzes don't cover all issues. There's a limit to what will be covered in the quiz. If you particularly care about foreign policy to a particular country, or plans for a development in your local area or very particular reforms in the criminal justice system, the quiz you're taking might just not take that into account. This is even more likely if happen if you have a slightly unconventional set of views, such as a libertarian free market environmentalist.
2) A lot of what a government does isn't in their manifesto, if it was we could just vote for a set of policies and and save the expense of human beings. In the 2001 election no-one could foresee the September 11th attacks and the seismic impact they had upon British policy. You need to elect the people you trust the most to do the right thing in all of the unexpected situations which will arise in the next five years. For this reason you need to not just look at a party's policies, but also the ideology and world view which is underlying these policies and how that would play out in the event of a new armed conflict, a natural disaster, a disease pandemic, an economic crisis etc.
3) You elect a person not a party. That person can switch parties without standing for re-election and most MPs who aren't mindless careerists will have the odd issue where they decent from the party line. It's worth finding out what your actual candidates support, particularly if you care a lot about a particular issue and even more if that issue tends to be a free vote issue.
*Can you tell that I'm a Lib Dem?