I pretty much ignore party affiliation for local elections, but for general elections it’s paramount, because the MP will be dragooned into voting along party lines anyway.
More correctly it's an issue for the right when it comes to finding ways to exclude trans people and the deportation of foreign criminals; simple bad faith advocacy the vast majority of the time.
The Representation of the People Act 1969 allowed for party political description on ballot papers. However it took the Registration of Political Parties Act 1998 for this to be regulated. Famously there were instances of candidates standing as “Literal Democrats” or similar. The 1998 Act also allowed party logos on the ballot.
Any electoral candidate who studied "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" at university and then becomes a party researcher should immediately be disqualified.
Maybe an aptitude test for forum members….. and yes I include myself
venerablepuzzle.wordpress.com
But I doubt they could be relied on to vote according to the party line once they'd reached Parliament.I was just thinking that!
But ultimately it's down to us, the electorate, to choose the most suitable, competent, reliable, trustworthy, experienced, honorable person for the job. Someone who knows our community, the issues it faces and is willing to stand up and represent us.
The problem we have is that most people vote according to political affiliation. Which means, in some cases, you could almost literally have a dead donkey as candidate and they'd get elected. Candidates don't even issue personal election statements! And they don't represent their constituents, they represent themselves, their party and/or their party leader (Farage seems to spend more time in the USA than Clacton ..... ) I want an MP who can think for themselves, not one who blindly does whatever his gang leader tells him.
Not even sure why we even bother with candidates names these days.
We don't have a democracy, we have a particracy
Badenoch (if that is how her name is spelled) is not a particularly memorable figure.Did I miss something?
Sunak was the leader of the Conservatives at the last general election.Did I miss something?
Possibly there is a case for some kind of test of a person's suitability to vote. The kind of incompetent ignorance described in post #14 shown by two people who walked out when they found they couldn't vote directly for Farage is ridiculous.
So an IQ test then or some other ableist exclusionary policy to disallow people on the grounds of an intellectual disability. Just say it out loud.
It's ridiculous but it's also their right. And in fact it's a problem which resolves itself really - if voters can't work out how to vote for Farage indirectly by actually voting for their local Reform candidate and instead they walk out, then there was no need for a test of their understanding which they would've failed, as the net result in both cases is they don't cast a vote.
What is "ableist"? Do you have some objection to people who are at the upper end of ability? Maybe there's something you should say out loud.
It looks as if you're reducing the issue to "If they don't realise they can't vote directly for Farage but they could support him by voting for the Reform candidate, and instead they walk out, that's OK because Reform doesn't receive a vote". But it applies to all parties. Anyone in 2019 who walked out because they couldn't vote directly for Corbyn or Johnson.
What a bizarre response.
What you propose will remove the absolute right of people with certain disabilities to vote, which is currently enshrined in law.
No, that's no what I said at all. I said the net result in that case would've been the same had there been an aptitude test for how to vote. That isn't specific to Reform - it would apply equally to anyone who comes into a polling station asking how to vote for Starmer, when Starmer is not a candidate in that constituency. I will of course say that across around a dozen elections in England and Scotland, I have only ever encountered this walking out from with Farage voters from memory.
Most likely because there is no fair test which could be applied.
So now we've gone from just "ableist" to "grossly ableist". I wonder what the next level of this terminology will be. Attaching labels like this to other people's views is not a helpful way of discussing things.
No, you made a proposal around qualifying voters based on competence, like so:
Absolutely not. At a national level you're really voting for the party you wish to form the government, you're not voting for the individual MP.
An opinion is not a proposal. I also said that possibly there should be a test. I made it clear that I saw problems around actually devising such a test.
It would be lost, as per your idea of "getting people to take a test showing they can reason". There is nothing to consider.
Well, yes - this is an ableist idea which, by design, directly disenfranchises intellectually disabled people and removes a civil right from them to participate in society. If that is an acceptable outcome for you, you simply need to have the courage to say so. I'm not saying you aren't allowed to think about it, but I am telling you in no uncertain terms it's ableist, and will harm people you probably did not intend to harm, because I assume you are a decent person who might care about unintended consequences like that.
There are no certainties because it's not going to happen. You're posting in a little polyp of a thread that was hived off from another because it was off topic and daft, and using it to post zero stakes ideas which won't happen, and but which are doing nothing but reveal how prevalent ableist thinking is in otherwise decent and reasonable people.
We somehow need to educate the entire public on topics like disinformation, or confirmation bias resulting from self-reinforcing social media algorithms.
