Following on from the previous blog, it is time to contemplate the Scottish elections in which 4% of votes were rejected because voters had become confused by the form and filled it in invalidly.
I watched PMQs yesterday, and David Cameron was having a real go at Gordon Brown, trying to get him to admit that the minister in charge of the election (Douglas Alexander, now International Development Secretary) had made a hash of it. He quoted the Electoral Commission's report into the fiasco saying that Ministers in the Scotland Office "frequently focused on partisan political interests, overlooking voter interests". That sounds fairly definitive, but Gordon wasn't having any - all the political parties had agreed on the procedures, so they were all equally guilty.
Well let's examine that idea a little more closely, shall we? It wasn't just Douglas Alexander who made a hash of it, it was all his opposite numbers in the other parties too. So they should all be sacked, right? Wrong. Just an unfortunate accident really, nobody responsible because they all were - that's how the subtext runs. Is that how things work in whatever business you happen to be employed in? No, not in mine, either.
It's yet another example of the trend in British politics: nobody ever makes a mistake, and after an obvious blunder nobody ever either resigns or gets the sack. You probably have to go back 30 years to find a time where it was normal for ministers to hold their hands up for mistakes, though as 'recently' as 1983 Lord Carrington did the honourable thing for not predicting the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. I think he was the last.
No wonder there is such disillusion with politics and politicians. We have effectively an elective dictatorship, and even when they make such obvious boo-boos as the Scottish ballot papers we have no means of holding them to account until the next General Election - and then the only other choice is the lot we threw out last time when we couldn't stand them any more.
No wonder, also, that there is such an emphasis on tactical voting these dys. Most voters are choosing the candidate they dislike least rather than someone they actually want as their representative.
If only we were allowed a choice of whether to cast our vote positively for the candidate we wanted, or negatively against the one we wanted rid of, the political landscape would be transformed overnight. We would end up with some very strange people getting elected because all the major parties would get massive negative votes - but at least it would put the fun back into politics!
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