How much my vote counts

Category : Politics, Equality

As you may, or may not, know it is election time in the UK. Come May 6th Democracy will find itself, once again, under the scrutiny of nations as we, the people, decide who will be running the UK on May the 7th. One person, one vote, right?

Wrong.

I had always known that our electoral system was more complicated than, in my opinion, it should be, "One Person, One Vote" Seems to me to be both the fairest and the most accurate way for democracy to be run. But although I'd always had an inkling that the electoral system was unfair I never knew how it was unfair, or indeed just how unfair it really was...After all, politics (up until 6 or so months ago) Was mind-cripplingly uninteresting to me.

But today I was shown http://www.voterpower.org.uk/ and all of a sudden, in the plainest of ways, I have been shown just how unfair the UK Electoral system is, how much my vote counts and why my vote counts how much it does.

According to that website, everyone who lives where I live does not get a vote equivalent to "1 vote". According to that website, My vote is worth exactly 0.342 votes.

I, as a person living in a modern democracy, am worth slightly over a third of a vote. And, according to that website, I'm pretty lucky to have that paltry amount of power as the average voter in the UK is worth 0.253 votes...and the spectrum is as varied as it can get.

Depending on where they live, an individuals vote can be worth a pathetic 0.002 votes to an exaggerated 1.308 votes. Or to put it another way, for the crime of being born in Knowsley it would take 654 votes to counter ONE vote from Arfon.

It is times like this that it makes me wonder if there is a point voting at all, but then I stop and think about it; YES it IS worth it. It may not effect anything in the coming election, true, I may be only worth a third of a person right now, true, But change is not made in leaps and bounds. By doing nothing I am certain to change nothing, but by doing something, no matter how small or trivial that thing is, it will have an effect.

And whats more, is that if every person who has convinced themselves "There is no point in voting" actually voted, they might just find that they swing more power than the current system would like to give them.

Come May 6th, I hope that everyone who has the power to Vote in the UK does.

And I hope you vote for the Lib Dems.

Up until the election, I will most likely be blogging about the election (But not exclusively)