Who Should You Vote For?
Who Should You Vote For? has been updated [via "author of my favourite Faction Paradox book":http://infinitarian.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_infinitarian_archive.html#111471124359423546 (I should point out that I've only read the first two)].
Over the past week, I’ve been thinking heavily about who I should vote for. This is what the website says :-
 Labour 19 |
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Conservative -40  |
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| Liberal Democrat 93 |
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| UK Independence Party -22 |
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| Green 79 |
You should vote: Liberal Democrat
I have three choices. Martin Salter is a good, local MP and contributes to Reading West in a big way. He has even campaigned down my road and got the pot holes in the road fixed. He has voted the “right” way on Iraq and is only let down on his views on ID cards. I will try to get a reply from him on this.
The other two choices are the LibDems and the Green party. This website thinks Lib Dems, but I’m edging towards Green. Should I put national politics ahead of the local work Mr. Salter has done? Remember Reading West is considered a safe seat. I got a leaflet from Labour stating that the Lib Dems say I should vote Labour to keep the Tories out. I doubt if they would admit this if I phoned them directly, but tactical voting is a very odd thing causing strange voting. This is a major issue in our First Past the Post system.
May 4th, 2005 at 22:16
Do you have a preferential system? If, say, I voted for the lib dems in Australia and then gave my second preference to labour, if the lib dems didn’t have enough to get in in my electorate, then my vote would go to labour, who would probably get in if it’s a safe seat. The other thing about Australian voting is that my vote only goes trowards my local electorate, and only affects the national result by contributing to whoever gets in locally. Sending a message by voting for someone else really doesn’t work, and you do run the risk of weakening what’s otherwise a strong seat. Am I making any sense at all?
May 5th, 2005 at 7:02
Nah, “first past the post”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post only. The LibDems are going for some form of proportional representation, but of course neither Labour or the Tories want that as they have the advantage in the first-past-the-post system.