Paxman: "You can't even be arsed to vote?"
Brand: "It's quite a narrow, quite a narrow prescriptive parameter that changes within in the ah""
Paxman: "In a democracy that's how it works."
Brand: "Well I don't think it's working very well, Jeremy. Given that the planet is being destroyed. Given that there is economic disparity of a huge degree. What are you saying? There's no alternative? There's no alternative? Just this system?"
Paxman: "No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying if you can't be arsed to vote why should we be asked to listen to your political point of view?"
There's a mindset in these so-called democratic systems that not voting is a negative thing, not an act of defiance but an unwillingness to want to be represented, or worse a desire to let down those people who fought to give you the right to vote. I have huge respect for anyone who fights for what they genuinely believe is the right thing, even if that may be deluded, but in the wildest of wild dreams has anyone really fought for the simple right to vote? Of course not. Emily Davidson threw herself under the King's horse in the fight for equal rights for women, not for a piece of paper upon which a cross can symbolically be made.
Brand's response to Paxman's last question elucidated this clearly:
Brand: "You don't have to listen to my political point of view. But it's not that I'm not voting out of apathy. I'm not voting out of absolute indifference and weariness and exhaustion from the lies, treachery, deceit of the political class, that has been going on for generations now.
It is imperative that we reverse the message that not voting is a negative thing. It is an act of defiance, but more than that, it is a clear message that not voting is a rejection of the existing system that does not, and never has represented the will of ordinary people. Whether not voting can, of itself, make a difference is another matter entirely.
What If No One Voted?
I contacted electoral offices in the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and The Netherlands with a simple question: Is there a minimum voter turnout that has to be reached for a national election to be valid, i.e. below what percentage of the electorate would another election have to be called due to insufficient turnout?
In all cases the response was the same -- there is no minimum number of people who have to vote in order for an election to be valid. Let me put that another way: regardless of how few people vote, it is assumed that a government is representative of the electorate. I have to imagine that the assumption behind this bizarre setup is that people had a chance to vote and if they don't then tough luck. But that's bullshit, surely? Any government that purports to represent the people, but which is not voted for by the majority of the electorate cannot have any moral right to represent that electorate, let alone the entire population.
Any government without a mandate has no choice but to rule by force, or at least mass deception. There is a word for this: regime.
So let's suppose that only a small minority of people vote for the party or individual that has power over them"hang on, hasn't that happened already?
In 2012 the population of the USA was around 315 million people. According to the United States Elections Project2, of that population 241 million were eligible to vote by age. After taking away the prison population and other felony restrictions, plus non citizens (by choice or otherwise) there were 222 million people eligible to vote. Of those, about 130 million actually cast a vote. So already we can see that the total number of people voting in the USA presidential election in 2012 was 41% of the population. This is by no means exceptional, with voter turnout ranging from 57.1% down to 49% since 1971 -- the year voting age was lowered to 18 -- 40% of the total number of people actually voting is about average. And then, of course, we look at who won the elections, i.e. who has, or at least represents who has power.3 Due to the weird nature of the Electoral College system, you can be President with less than 50% of the popular vote (in fact it's not really that weird, with more parties the percentage could be even lower), and in 2012 President Obama was elected by only 65.9 million people, or just 21% of the population of the USA. How unrepresentative is that? Yet, it's entirely typical of the voting systems right across the industrial "democratic" West that all give the illusion that governments represent the wishes of the people.
So, what if no one voted? It wouldn't be an awful lot different to the current situation, except there would be a huge number of empty polling stations and windswept precincts devoid of people willing to take part in the election charade. Plus, there would be an awful lot of people who have carried out a small act of rebellion, consciously and in opposition to the wishes of the system. Maybe it's symbolic, but for many people it might be the first time they have done something "unacceptable". It's a good feeling.
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