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Other Party
Voting option when you hate all the candidates. |
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Add "Other" to voting papers. If the Other Party wins, a skilled person is drawn from a pool and asked to represent the will of the electorate in an honest but dull way.
In case of low voter turn-out, 50% votes not cast is credited to the Other Party. Many districts have a fraction of toxic voters
who will vote for a toxic candidate when others abstain.
The UK Clacton by-election is relevent here. The toxic incumbent has forced an election, presumably to get another term before sleaze allegations come to court. All major UK parties have agreed to not field candidates, as this would make the election result seem legitimate. The major rival in the election is Count Binhead.
Count Binhead himself pointed out that a protest candidate can win. Martin Bell, a BBC reporter, stood against a similarly unopposed toxic candidate, won, took his seat, and made a popular job of it.
The Other Party would provide a consistent equivalent of the protest candidate rather than relying on some high-minded person to stand Pro Bono Publico.
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Following Hegel, I am a card-carrying member of the Other Other Party, and I don't vote in any election. |
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I lead a faction that wants to split from the Other Other Party and stand up the OOO Party, but we don't know what we stand for. |
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A "None of the Above" option has been mooted on numerous occasions & there is currently a petition for it on the UK Parliament website so [marked-for-deletion] not an original idea & advocacy.
Now to address specific issues in your version of it & do a little advocacy of my own! :)
//If the Other Party wins, a skilled person is drawn from a pool//
What do you mean by 'skilled'? How is this to be measured? By whom? How do I get to be in this 'pool'?
//asked to represent the will of the electorate in an honest but dull way.//
This is just a way of getting some dull bureaucrat without a mandate into parliament. The actual votes cast become meaningless as does the democratic process. How do you determine what the 'will' of the electorate is?
//In case of low voter turn-out, 50% votes not cast is credited to the Other Party.//
Why? Who does that benefit? Certainly not the people who didn't want to participate in the process.
//The Other Party would provide a consistent equivalent of the protest candidate//
This is just a corporatisation of dissent & thus a contradiction in terms.
The idea fails to address the real issues that lead to low voter turnout. To me, these are...
- Lack of representation; It is now so expensive to stand as a candidate in a parliamentary election that only the large, organised and/or wealthy parties can field a meaningful slate of candidates & most low income earners are effectively disbarred from standing independently. It still happens in occasional by-elections, witness the 32-ish candidates standing in Clacton, but generally it is not the case.
- Lack of responsibility to their electorate. Once an MP is elected then they really don't have to worry about their electors, the people that they are supposed to represent, for the next 4 years. Instead, they can toddle off to parliament, collect their salary & associated pension, & do whatever their party leader tells them to do. I am obviously making a crude generalisation there, but that is the perception that many people have & that is what is important in understanding low turnout.
- Lack of engagement in politics generally. Over the years, local government has been gradually stripped of almost all of it's powers. Consequently there is little reason to get involved in local politics (the nitty, gritty, ground-level stuff) beyond using it as a stepping stone in a party career. Politics without power is just masturbation. The increasing centralisation of power needs to be halted & reversed, though I am not naieve enough to believe that this will happen under the current system. Power is taken, not given! |
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Won't the toxic candidates that are still in power do everything so this does not get included in the vote? |
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Replies (mostly to DrBob)... |
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I do not claim that 'none of the above' on a ballot is an original idea. I think that 'none of the above', spoiled ballots, and unused votes are useful data and we should use it. |
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I do not try to fix low voter turnout. What I don't want is that the few who are motivated to turn out by hatred or personal gain get to scoop the prize. |
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I have not tried to fix the voting itself. I think the 'first past the post' system is particularly broken. I think approval voting is better, and easier to understand. But I am not getting involved in that here: all voting systems break down when turnout is low. How should we handle the limiting case of an election where no-one votes? |
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Anyone standing for an MP is applying for a job that they have never done. It should be possible to train people to be ready to stand for a constituency by showing them how the job really works, with a grounding in political history. Our candidate may be better prepared for the job than most first-time MPs. |
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How would a stand-in MP vote? They should have no special interests. In most cases they can use their common sense, which probably represents what most non-voters would do. If the issue is controversial they can abstain. If they do not have a direct responsibility to the electorate, they still have a responsibility to do their job well. They will probably have the eyes of the media on them. |
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A few years ago I might have hoped that AI might help in the process. AI has shown its talent for irrationality, veniality, racism, lying, back-stabbing and playing to the gallery to such an extent that it seems over-qualified for the job. However, a stand-in MP might cite AI replies to justify their actions. |
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//What I don't want is that the few who are motivated to turn out by hatred or personal gain get to scoop the prize.//
Well we are agreed on that, certainly.
I disagree with you on 'first past the post' but I'll leave it at that for the time being.
As you suggest, it doesn't matter what system you have in place if people do not participate in the process in good faith. The USA has seperation of powers built into their electoral system but, like all processes, it means nothing in the face of determined collusion to undermine it.
//Anyone standing for an MP is applying for a job that they have never done. It should be possible to train people...etc///
Therein lays the problem though. Who does the training? Why should the status quo be the only way to do the job? Who are these people that have a grounding in political history that you speak of? The subject certainly isn't in the National Curriculum & never has been as far as I am aware. It bloomin' well should be though!
//How would a stand-in MP vote? They should have no special interests.//
If they have no special interests then why are they involved in politics? What you seem to be proposing is replacing MPs with some nice, inoffensive bureaucrats. But that is the situation that we already have.
//...they still have a responsibility to do their job well. They will probably have the eyes of the media on them.//
Do they? What actually is their job? And the media is hardly a neutral arbiter of this really, is it? With some exceptions, it's a venomous nest of vested interests, racism & bigotry.
Again I reiterate that there is too much 'big' politics & not enough 'little' politics where people can learn the realities, pitfalls, rewards & occasional satisfactions of doing the job at a scale that doesn't result in the destruction of the national economy after a couple of weeks in office.
I've said my bit so I'll shut my gob now, guv! :D |
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It seems combat is the goto metaphor for politics. We have to fight for our rights. We have to seize the high ground. We need to wage war on drugs, poverty, or whatever. Anything that isn't part of our Great Struggle (tm) is against us... |
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If we accept there may be other valid opinions, then approval voting allows you to vote for all the parties you would accept. The party with the highest approval gets in. You don't have to vote tactically as you to for first past the post, and risk the vote being split and the party you don't want getting in. This doesn't help if not enough people are voting, but it is better than what we have. |
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Does the Other Party candidate represent 'the people' ? We don't really know. We hope they will do their best, and show no obvious bias that was not shared by the electorate. This may not be perfect, but it is better than what we have. We should not require the Other candidate meets standards way beyond that of the ordinary candidate. |
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Lack of involvement might be a good thing. The Taoist ideal of 'wu wei' is to do the minimum necessary to ensure that the right thing happens of itself. A bit idealistic, maybe, but there should be no need to manufacture perpetual struggle. |
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Reading Terry Ptatchett's "Raising Steam" this evening, I came across this quote from Moist von Lipwig... |
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"I think you are right, Dick, it's one of those times when you have to stop thinking about the how and the why, and remember that whatever's happening is working and it just might not work if anyone gets smart and tries to find the soul of what's happening. There are times when the sliding rule doesn't cut the mustard..." |
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//the minimum necessary to ensure that the right thing happens of itself// |
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Unless you believe that the current state of affairs could be characterised as "the right thing happens of itself", that minimum might be rather more than is currently being done. |
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