Democratic No Man’s Land
by jb
The historic nature of this day meant I could not pass up the opportunity to write a post. For today, of course, marks a significant shift in ‘business as usual’, a sea change. Am I referring to the change to allow non-latin scripts in web addresses. Or perhaps the swearing in of a new Nigerian President. Or possibly the vote in the Greek parliament on cuts.
I can’t be referring to the UK election because, at time of writing, the election isn’t featured as any of the top stories on the BBC website. Of course, if you continue to the News page you can find more coverage than you require. But still, it’s an interesting statement on the relative unimportance of this election, to the rest of the World, that the stories
and
and also
all feature twice within the ” More top stories” widget on bbc.co.uk, whereas the UK election is confined to the news.bbc.co.uk site.
This is the first time I have been old enough to vote in the UK General Elections. However, the UK election is even less important for me personally than it is for most British citizens. Not only do I not live in the UK (I live in the Netherlands, and can vote in the local elections here), but also (despite the fact that I registered to vote well before the deadline) I have yet to receive my postal ballot. Now, I should take this opportunity to point out to those people to whom the UK election is irrelevant (ie the rest of the World) that the date of the election is May 6 2010. Given that today is May 6 2010, we can then derive the number of days in the month of May left for me to receive my ballot and perform the appropriate democratic activities and send it back. This calculation is shown in the following equation:
So it would seem that my wildly uninformed democratic voice will not be heard this time around. According to the http://aboutmyvote.co.uk website, from The Electoral Commission,
You should receive your postal ballot about one week before the election. If it doesn’t arrive, you can get a replacement ballot paper in person from your Returning Officer up until 5pm on election day.
(http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/faq/voting_by_post.aspx)
so I have less than 3 hours to get back to blighty and locate my friendly neighbourhood returning officer. This information, though, is clearly directed at postal voters in the UK. I suppose it is entirely my own fault for not appointing a proxy to vote for me (I’m assuming the person overseas gets to tell the proxy who the vote is for, rather than just delegating that tricky part of ‘choosing the candidate’, to the proxy):
Postal votes are only sent out about a week before election day, and you will need to consider whether this gives you enough time to complete and return your form in time. It may be better to appoint a proxy to vote on your behalf.
(http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk/faq/overseas_voters.aspx)
One begins to wonder why bother even allowing voting by post for overseas voters. The Netherlands is not all that far from the UK, and there are relatively few war zones and erupting volcanoes between me and the British Isles, so if postal votes arrive much too late for me, the situation could presumably be much worse for overseas voters in places further afield.
I suppose it is not such a disaster if, at this first opportunity for me, I cannot vote. I probably would have wasted it by voting Liberal Democrat, anyway.
UPDATE: My mother received her ballot at lunchtime May 6. I have yet to receive mine. Yay.
