Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Vote!
If you do one thing today, vote.
If you genuinely believe that no party represents your views, spoil your ballot paper.
It is your duty!
If you haven’t decided on a party to vote for yet, and live in Scotland, have a look at these websites:
- Major Parties:
- Scottish Conservative & Unionist Party
- Scottish Green Party
- Scottish Labour
- Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Scottish National Party
- Scottish Socialist Party
- Minor Parties
- British National Party
- Fergus Tait (Independent)
- Operation Christian Vote
- Save Our Hills
- United Kingdom Independence Party
- More information:
- EU Elections 2004 - Glasgow University Library’s excellent guide
- Vote 2004 - the BBC’s in depth, UK-wide guide.
- What Are The European Elections? - a brief overview at the Scotsman.
As far as I’m aware, those are the parties standing in the European Parliament elections, listed alphabetically. (They’re divided into major and minor parties for the simple reason that I couldn’t bear to see the BNP head the list.)
These elections are not a chance to protest against Labour’s keen participation in the illegal invasion of Iraq, or a sort of pre-referendum on the UK’s role in the EU. Since the The European Parliament is the only chance the general public have to influence decisions taken on our behalf in Europe, please vote according to how you wish Europe to be run, not because you’re pissed off with Blair or have qualms about the European Constitution.
My apologies for the horribly patronising tone of this post - I’m sure most readers will be proudly exercising their hard-won right to vote today - but I just know that when I go out tonight and ask folk if they mind telling me how they voted, most will say that they couldn’t be bothered, or that they wasted their vote to punish Blair.
I’ll be voting!!
i have also encouraged others to vote
so heres hoping people make an effort
Posted by badgergirl at 5pm on 10.06.04
The lady in the polling station told me that, at her guess, this was heading to be the worst turnout she’d ever seen. And that was before it started raining.
I wish we had compulsory voting, like in Australia and elsewhere.
Posted by Jack at 5pm on 10.06.04
the elections in belgium are on sunday. my belgian friend dirk who is visiting me on sunday had to change his flight to a later one as otherwise he would have had to pay a 1000 euro fine for not voting. why can’t they do that here?
Posted by stirmonster at 6pm on 10.06.04
did it, done it.
not fucking easy tho. finding polling station was tricky.
and little promotion of parties save one or two leaflets through the door.
apparently germany was bored to death with the “advertising”.
Posted by generalape at 3am on 11.06.04
why can’t they do that here?
Because everyone would start bleating about it infringing their civil liberties.
If you had an ‘I abstain’ or ‘none of the above’ option on the ballot, I can’t really see any problems with compulsory voting.
And what a kicking Labour got in England & Wales! Although not as bad as the one they got when Hague was leading the Tories, and that didn’t exactly translate into a victory for them at the next General Election.
Posted by Jack at 9am on 11.06.04
I agree on compulsory voting. It’s not that much of an effort to fill in a bit of paper. And while the ‘I don’t do politics’ ads are bloody awful, they make a decent point.
Posted by kevin at 3pm on 11.06.04