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July 10, 2008
Doughnuts for all
I got woken up this morning to doughnuts. Or rather (and differently pleasurable) a call from LBC radio to do an interview in response to Hazel Blears' Empowerment White Paper, which came out yesterday. the headline measure from that - at least what the Daily Mail and then LBC chose to pick up on - was the idea of offering incentives, ranging from stickers to doughnuts to scratchcards and prize draws, to people who voted in local elections.
I'd like a doughnut for voting - it would set me up for work that day. But I'm going to vote anyway. Such a measure is not exactly going to change the fundamental problems we have on turnout - espeically that voters don't feel they are being listened to or can have a real influence on the result. Their votes in many cases and wards don't actually matter. None of the good things and also gimmicks proposed by Blears will change this fact.
Considering the White Paper is based on the independent Councillors' Commission report that was published last year, it is disappointing that the Government has chosen not to go ahead with one of the Commission's key recommendations: allowing councils to pilot STV (or other forms of voting system) for their elections. More on this from ERS.
Though the Government - from Hazel Blears to Michael Wills - seems to be asking the right questions on representative democracy, it is choosing to answer by tackling minor aspects or going for participatory forms of democracy (all good fo themselves) rather than by looking properly at how to improve our representative democracy - at local and national levels - and how a fairer more representative voting system may well be part of that.
Posted by malcolmclark on July 10, 2008
