Opinion: Why I’m not spoiling my vote

Like Ben, I live in a Labour safe seat but I’m still going to make sure I get myself over to the polling station tomorrow.

Maybe it’s because I’ve spent less time around politics than my non-voting colleague.

This is the first election that I’ve been able to vote in – the last election I was seventeen and stayed up all night to watch the results come in live. I believe that politics can change things and we need to be involved and part of the change. Yes, First Past The Post isn’t proportion system and when people are split in this way it’s unlikely we’ll get a clear winner (again!) but we still need to make that trip once every five years to make our voices’ – no matter how quiet – heard.

I don’t believe in all the politicians, but I believe that enough really want to make an actual change rather than just doing it for the status. To say that we don’t have visionaries might be going a little too far. Yes, most parties are relatively central but they are not all the same. We don’t need politicians to give us a vision of the perfect Britain. What we need is politicians who are going to be honest and realistic about what they are going to do to make this country a better place for everyone and how they will achieve it. Maybe it’s time for “under-promise and over-deliver” politics.

It’s not a responsibility to vote, it’s a right. But I believe in no vote, no voice. If we don’t even try to vote for the people that we believe in, or even to stop the people we don’t believe in getting the seat we’re, taking ourselves out of the debate. Now, for some people that’s OK, they are happy to go with whatever they’ve got and just plough on regardless. But to take yourself out of the debate, in my eyes, strips you of the right to complain about your lot. You didn’t care then, you can’t whine now. That’s why I’ll be making my way to the polling station so that I can at least say that I voted for the party I wanted in power. If they don’t get in, at least I can talk about how the party I’d voted for would’ve led real change, if you don’t vote what can you say?

My final point on why people should go and vote is illustrated in the best way below – it’s about Texas but it still relevant.

*Cartoon by Nick Anderson