I have just voted in the General Election. I had to. I have voted in every UK General Election that I have been registered to vote in and see it as something of a duty, even though the whole, highly flawed** process needs reforming.
About three months ago I started the Overseas Elector registration process by filling in the online forms. Almost immediately I got a reply saying that I needed to prove who I was by getting someone else to vouch for me. The fact that I stood in the Wolverhampton South West General Election of 2010 and had been a Wolverhampton Councillor from 2007 to 2011 didn’t assist my application in any way. I still needed to prove that I was THE Robin Lawrence. But only certain people, apparently were qualified to prove that I was Robin Lawrence. Those people had to be registered Overseas Electors already and sign my proof of me-ness form to say that they were an OE. Various kind people offered to assist me, some of them, interestingly, were people who I had never met and had no idea who I was, but I eventually settled on the kind help of my colleague, the head of maths. Duly completed I posted the form when we were back in GB on holiday at Easter. On 11th April I received a letter confirming that I had been accepted on to the OE register. Marvellous. All I had to do was wait for the ballot paper to arrive and then send it back.
I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
On Thursday it arrived. Hooray! It had taken almost two weeks to travel from Wolverhampton to Kuala Lumpur and, of course there were several buts….
Edwin and I didn’t get home until 10.30pm on Thursday due to his dance lessons, Friday was the Labour day National Holiday and therefore post offices were closed. Also Monday is a holiday too. The postal vote had to be back in Wolverhampton South West HQ by Thursday at 10.00pm. If I wanted to vote I would either have to deliver the ballot paper in person or use the services of DHL, whose office was also closed on Friday.
To cut a long story short I have just visited the local DHL office and paid RM155 to post the ballot paper with a guaranteed delivery on Thursday daytime. I did, briefly dabble with he idea of not voting, but decided that it was too important* not to vote.
*This is quite a significant asterisk. For the past 20+ years Wolverhampton South West has been a "Chuckle Brothers" constituency. Party A has held the seat until they have handed it over to party B who, in turn, has handed it back to party A and thence back to party B and so on. This “To me, to you, to me, to you.” approach to democracy really irritates me. Wolverhampton South West should not be a marginal it should be a safe seat for one party and return a person representing that same party election after election. The main reason that it does not do that is because the incumbent MP, whether that be from party A or B has never worked hard enough to secure the seat for their party. Before the 2010 General Election the incumbent was, in campaigning terms, invisible. No leaflets came through our door advertising their brilliance, the MP rarely featured in the local newspaper and never seemed to lead or do anything of any significance locally or nationally. It was no surprise that he lost in 2010, to be replaced by the representative of party B who followed his predecessor act of invisibility and ineffectiveness. Current predictions suggest that the representative of party A will win on Thursday, largely because he is not a member of party B. I have voted for party C, mostly on principle, but also because the other two have made such little effort to secure what should have been theirs and so do not deserve my tiny portion of democracy.
** … in a flawed system it is frustrating to think that my vote for party C will, in effect count for nothing. I know that party C have absolutely no chance of winning the seat and therefore my views will not be represented in any way for the next five years, should I, at anytime, chose to move back and live in Wolverhampton South West. If only there was a much fairer system of voting that shared out the representative seats across the whole country along the lines of proportional representation then my vote would have currency and the election would be fair. First past the post is the most effective way of measuring races, but not the most effective way of measuring the views of the population.