Just put the X in the Box

Why do we vote?

I know that may seem a very open-ended question, although in the context of the recent election in Iran it may be too tempting to give it a more specific spin. I don’t know if that election was rigged or not, but the notion that, whatever the electorate decide, the result is the same would seem to have prompted the question above. Ken Livingstone’s autobiography, “If Voting Changed Anything, They’d Abolish It” covers somewhat similar ground. So the question, “Why do we vote?” might be read rather as “Why do people bother voting if their choice is going to be undermined or ignored?”

One answer to that question, I suppose (were it to have been the question I intended to ask), is that sometimes we at least want to register our views. Yes, they are going to be ignored, but maybe, just maybe, if we all protest enough…? We don’t expect to have our choices enacted, but we at least want the world to know what they are.

And again: there is always the chance that - given a sizeable enough group of us - we may sway political behaviour and debate even if we don’t win outright. The Green argument:- indirect influence through coming a surprisingly healthy second. Or third. Or whatever. The motivation for voting for any small minority view, perhaps. So called 'protest' voting.

I have to admit, however, that when I typed in the question above, that that wasn’t what I was really thinking about. Not “Why do we vote when we can have no – or little - effect”. Rather, “How do we choose who to vote for?” (I know that should be whom but it just looks wrong). What influences me, and what measures do I apply?

Do I vote for the person who will do the best by me personally – given my current position, the candidate who will make sure I am most well off? Or do I vote for the “common good” – perhaps as a minimum that translates as the candidate who will do best for society’s poorest?

That is the “altruism axis” – how much I allow a disinterested moral altruism, concerned with others, to influence the voting choice I make. And how do I make that judgement accurately? Someone voting for the BNP scum may have been personally, selfishly interested in reducing local competition for jobs and houses from people who feel very distant from them in their lives and experiences – or they may believe passionately that the BNP programme is the best possible outcome for all concerned (weird I know, but possible – or at least I’ve heard it claimed).

This leads perhaps to questions of efficiency. Who is actually going to deliver, effectively and with the fewest number of unacceptable (unexpected) side effects, on the goals they have set? You might call this the effectiveness axis. Again, that is really hard to measure.

One simple example: Yes, Labour are unlikely to meet the targets that they set on reducing child poverty – so from one, target-oriented, perspective their measures have been ineffective. However, it is possible that all other choices would have been less effective. We are prone to assume that in the absence of policy the steady-state dominates. It is possible (unlikely in this case, perhaps) that child poverty would have got very much worse without the New Labour interventions. Maybe the improvements that were made were among the best that could be achieved? Note, I’m not arguing that this was the case, merely that effectiveness is hard to judge.

To take another example, the reduction in Hospital waiting times has been astonishing, and a true success on most accounts. Yet it has come at a significant financial cost. Was there a cheaper way to achieve it just as speedily?

Given how hard it might be to form such judgements, I would nevertheless suggest that form them we do, based on a range of good and bad sources of data. So if we do have a base of information about who is who, and who would do what, the question remains: How do we decide?
There are other axes and influences, of course. There is the perennial Local vs National question. And how far ahead are you looking? And in any case, different voters (I think) engage to widely differing degrees before putting pen to paper.

A further complication is that we are encouraged to filter all of these questions through the personalities (or perceived personalities – as seen through the meeja) of a few high-profile individuals. The Blair effect, or Brown effect. This to my mind complicates things further as it introduces a bifurcation – it splits why we voted from why we think we voted.

And finally, perhaps it is the wrong question. I'm less interested in knowing how people choose to vote the way they do than I am in getting them to vote better. The question is, how should people vote. Because as far as I can see, we aren't very good at it, and keep coming up with some really stupid answers (see those filed under "Johnson" for one). Phrased that way, I believe there is a quite straightforward solution.

And here is the answer:

Next time, just copy what I do.