Tories :-(
May 5th, 2007 at 22:02
If I already wasn’t slightly disillusioned with the democratic process, I would be now. By which I mean, the people I didn’t want to win the election won the election. The bastards!
Horribly, the Tories managed to gain control of my council (from the No Overall Control party). Incredibly, they weren’t even competing against Labour – the Liberal Democrats are the second biggest party around here. In my own ward, the two Tory candidates were elected. I am clearly surrounded by evil neighbours.
The new administration haven’t done anything too bad yet – although its only a matter of time before they build a big scary Eye of Sauron type thing over the council offices and try use “trickle down economics” despite the fact that it obviously doesn’t work.
The voting system for the local elections seems a bit funny to me. Take a look at the results:
Conservative #1: 642 (Elected)
Conservative #2: 627 (Elected)
Lib Dem #1: 542
Lib Dem #2: 475
English Democrats (ie: the rebadged BNP splinter group): 248
We got to vote for two candidates. Looking at the numbers, you can see that not everyone who voted for Tory #1 voted for Tory #2 – same for the LibDems. It makes me wonder if the LibDems had only put up one candidate they wouldn’t have split the LibDem vote, and at least got one councillor in? If the people who decided to vote for, say, one LibDem and one Tory (demented though they are), all picked the same LibDem to vote for, the LibDems might have got at least one person in?
And perhaps I should be grateful that we have hyper-nationalistic fascists in my council ward somewhere who are mad enough to vote for the English Democrats (formerly the Freedom Party)? It prevented the Tories from getting an even bigger majority of votes?
It’s given me a crazy idea about how the next election could be won by the good guys: all they’d need to do is use some dirty tricks! Why don’t the LibDems get some of their underlings to stand as independents campaigning with some centre-right policies? ie: splitting the Tories natural constituency right down the middle? A bit like how Ralph Nader cost Al Gore the 2000 American election. On the off-chance that the fake-independents are elected, they can simply switch to voting in favour of LibDem policies. Thinking about it, this is probably illegal? Does anyone know?
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