On Voting

 

It's Election Day this Saturday.  Don't forget to VOTE

My big thing about the pending election is that people VOTE.  I don't care who you are, where you live, what you do for a living or who you want to vote for.  I just want you to vote.  Even though I was disappointed with the last election results, I was more disappointed in how many people didn't vote at all.  26.2% of Kiwi's didn't vote.  That's too many.  And I won't be surprised if this election it's even higher.

Because I want everyone to vote, I've started asking customers at work if they are organised to vote.  While most people my age and older, and most women I've spoken to are, I found most of the young men (in their 20's) were not.  Some because they didn't know who to vote for, and some because they just weren't enrolled and weren't interested, and others because they thought it was too late and they didn't know how to vote.

If I had thought about this earlier and had more energy, I would have tried to organise some way of explaining basic things about voting to people.  Because after talking to just a small sample of people I realised that a system I think is quite simple, is actually quite confusing to some Kiwis.  And that's ok.   I think a part of this has come down to the assumption that all Kiwis have access to (and know how to use) the internet.  And have (and watch) Freeview.  And many Kiwis don't. 

On Thursday night I had to reassure someone that they really should open their election mail.  They probably weren't in trouble, it was probably just checking their address, or sending them their Easy Vote pack.  This person also thought he was too late to vote because he'd seen the early voting booths in his local library.  I explained that it wasn't the actual election day until next Saturday, but if he was enrolled and wanted to, he could vote early.

And yes there are those people with stickers and things that gravitate toward malls and try and encourage people to be enrolled, but that's usually during business hours, and it's in a mall.  Working poor people will:

a) be at work and

b) probably not frequent malls that much

as with little disposable income what is the point (unless it's school holiday's and there's free stuff for the kids).  And rich working people will also miss out.  Cos they probably have no time for malls and shop online whilst on the plane to X business meeting.  So those people only interact with a select part of society.  Not everyone.

And those people may not be able to explain all the necessary information required.  While NZ has a 99% literacy rate, 1% of New Zealanders is still a lot of NZers that will struggle to understand mail they receive.  Plus I'm sure plenty of people in that 99% of 'literate' NZers may be literate, but possibly not enough to understand their voting paperwork.  And 'people on the street' in general scare me.  They probably scare other people too.  Especially if they say you can be prosecuted for not enrolling.  That's pretty much police level scary.

I'm not saying Mall Vote shouldn't exist.  I'm just saying we need a broader approach to get people interested in voting.  Simple things like electing people (at community or government level) to sit down with people they know and talk them through the process.  Because this is definitely part of the problem.

The other part is people feeling disengaged - there is no point in voting.

It is difficult for me to fully understand this.  I can understand not wanting to vote because you don't feel anyone is good for this country, but if I were in that position I would do something about it.  Like start my own political party.  Or vote for the 'protest vote' party (The Civilian Party - alpacas and icecream, huzzah!).  But I can completely understand not voting because you don't see the point.

But I feel this is almost an issue of esteem.  Feeling so downhearted you see no point in voting - you don't feel that you can make a difference.  If this is why people don't vote it's sad.  If we lived in a well functioning society people with these issues would be picked up either by friends or whanau or even workmates.  I know I'm probably exaggerating here, but they genuinely cannot see that their view is important, that they can change the world (or their government at least).

What I have said to these people is to just pick one issue that's important to them.  It might be child poverty.  It might be how much tax they pay.  It might be education.  Whatever it is just look at the policy of the major parties (or all if you have time/energy) that relate to this - National, Labour, Greens and NZ First, and vote according to which policy works best with your beliefs.

An even simpler way to decide - if you like how NZ is going now vote National or one of their supporting parties (Act, United Future or probably The Conservatives), if not, vote Labour, Greens or Mana/Internet.  If you want to put the cat amongst the pigeons, vote NZ First.

And if you're stuck on who to vote for for your candidate there are many systems you can pick:
- choose the candidate from the party you like most
- choose the candidate most likely to beat the candidate from the party you like least
- choose the hottest candidate
- choose the candidate with the funniest name.

These are all valid ways of deciding who to vote for and in no way does they way in which you choose who you vote for diminish your vote, or your right to choose it that way.

Why is ensuring more Kiwi's vote important?  Because any government who is in power when almost 1/3 of folks didn't vote is not truly representative of our country.  It means our democracy is failing.  And this government in particular has used winning the election with votes from less people than those who didn't vote as a mandate to do whatever they wanted despite people's wishes.  Although I am not a fan of National and what they have done I am more sad because I feel like so many New Zealanders have given up on their country, and the rest of us are worse off for it*

I want all New Zealanders to feel that they are important, that they can make a difference.  That they can change their lives and their country for the better, and the simplest way of doing that is by voting for what they believe in. 


* Whether we have a change in government or not I believe this to be true.  If we had 90% of us voting and we have the same government I'd respect the situation a lot more as I'd feel it were more representative of us as a nation.