Stone the crows, I’m a Liberal Democrat. It comes as something of a surprise. I’ve always thought of myself as a Tory.
I believe in small government; that makes me a Blue, doesn’t it?
Not according to Vote For Policies it doesn’t. Here’s an example of a website that demonstrates the power that the internet has to change society. The concept is simple enough: publish policies from a selection of political parties and in a blind test, ask readers to select those policies with which they agree.
Statistically, a sample of a little over a thousand is enough represent the views of a population the size of the UK, within a reasonable margin of error. As of the 10th April 2010, nearly 80,000 people had registered their preferences, so we must assume that the results are representative of public opinion. (Acknowledging nevertheless the caveat that knowledge of the website is being spread by social networking – Facebook and the like – and so the audience is skewed in favour of those who are internet savvy. We can’t discount either the possibility that a minority group has encouraged its members to take part en masse – but even taking these factors in to account, the results are still significant.)
What are the results? They make worrying reading for politicians – and the rest of us – that’s for sure. The politicians must be worried that the party enjoying most support is the Greens. What future for the cozy Westminster major-party elite were a system of proportional representation introduced? As for the rest of us, that 20% of the electorate support UKIP or BNP policies speaks volumes about the need to educate the Great British Public.
The beauty about Vote For Policies is that it lets you choose different policies from different parties in each of nine areas; Education, Economy, Environment, and so on. It turns out that I prefer 1 Labour, 1 Green, 2 Conservative and an astonishing 5 Liberal Democrat policies. Who’d ‘ave thunk it? (My results are here for everyone to see)
If that’s a reason to sit up and take notice, here’s more food for thought. If, on the 6th May, I choose to give my single vote to the Liberal Democrats, I will be voting for a party despite disagreeing with 45% of their policies. The winners of the eleciton will no doubt claim that they have been given a mandate to implement the policies in their manifesto. All of those policies. But, as the power of the internet has demonstrated so ably, such a mandate is nothing of the sort. Even were I to vote for the winning party, large portions of their legislative agenda would be contrary to my wishes.
As an example, suppose I vote Tory after all. With a single vote at my disposal, how am I to make the new government understand that I like the thought of aggressive efficiency and productivity improvements in the civil service but hate the Tory’s regressive taxation policies? The great Johann Hari addresses the latter point more eloqently than I could, here: www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari
As ever, in this modern age, the question is one of data. This is something on which I can speak with some authority as I am an Information Architect. (If this means nothing to you, don’t worry; you’re not alone. The shortest explanation I can give is that I design the databases behind computer systems but the relevance here is that I’m also responsible for the movement of data – across sytems and, importantly, between people and systems.)
Our system of government was designed hundreds of years ago, in an age well before Charles Babbage first dreamed of modern computing but even in the 19th century, it would have been impossible to poll the public and ascertain their views on individual issues. In the world of an Information Architect, that last sentence would read, “…impossible to collect, analyse and report on the data.”
But we don’t live in the 19th century and we do have the means to handle immense volumes of data reliably. Everything we do nowadays, from banking, to shopping and socialising relies on our ability to manage data efficiently and safely. Surely there must be a way to harness the power of the internet to improve our system of government. Let me propose one solution.
An MP is required to vote in Parliament. In my solution, instead of voting in accordance with her manifesto, the MP would cast her vote in accordance with the wishes of the majority of her constituents on each issue. How would those wishes be ascertained? Every constituent on the electoral role in that borough would be given a log on to a secure website. Every day, the MP would email all registered users with the issues to be voted on that day. The constituents would record their votes on each issue and the MP would vote accordingly in parliament.
As I’m designing the system, I’ll go further. The MP would have to uphold the wishes of the people, even if she disagrees vehemently with the outcome. Risky? For sure. The BNP could easily encourage its supporters to participate in numbers and force the MP to vote in a way that everyone else would regret. Only once though, I’d suggest. The public would soon learn the lesson – that everyone should be engaged with politics because the decisions made in parliament affect us all.
Other objections? Not everyone has access to the internet. My system could disenfranchise the old and poor. The risk exists but we’re only talking about getting data to and from people – other solutions are possible. Teletext could get information in to the home and phone voting is familiar to everyone already. Or let’s think out of the box. By 2020, all homes will have smart electricity meters with a wireless in-home display; these could be configured easily to allow votes to be cast. Whatever the solution, casting your daily votes over breakfast could become a routine morning activity.
So, what about it? Worth a try at least, isn’t it? I wonder if someone can be persuaded to give it a go at the next by-election. Hmmmm.
Jon Tickle is an Information Architect for British Gas,
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Jon- interesting idea but are you not missing something here? Under your proposed system why would you retain the concept of having an MP? Just to act as a glorified hand raiser?
Surely they become the only point of failure in your super computer data system. If they by mistake say “nay” rather than “yay” come voting time. Therefore the logic says have everyone voting straight from their meter to a government super computer.
No more MP’s! No more expenses scandal! Everyone’s happy, except that kind of ignores a large reason for politicians existing. we elect an MP as our representative because we accept that whilst going about our everyday life we don’t have the time to give the level of attention to every decision that needs to be made by government.
Do we really all want the responsibility of making decisions every morning over our Coco Pops that can decide the future of nations, how soon before the majority stop bothering or just skim through without detailed thought? MPs should in theory be doing this for us.
Now if you can come up with a data solution that will reduce the power of the whips so that an MP always votes for the good of his constituency rather than tow the party line, then that is something I will vote for through my teletext!
Hello, Jamie! (It seems only appropriate when discussing an article about politics that I’m completely above board: Jamie is an old friend and ex-colleague.)
I should have expected a fellow Architect to highlight issues that weren’t articulated in the article! Yes, you’re entirely right to question the role of the MP. The answer is actually the solution to another problem, so I’ll start the explanation there.
“How,” asked an astute reader, “are you going to afford everything? People are just going to vote ‘Yes’ for things with no appreciation of the need for a balanced budget.”
In the same vein, another observered: “That’s never going to work. The first thing that would happen is that people would vote to bring back hanging or national service.”
The solution to these issues – and most of the ones in your post – is to realise that MPs are there to deliver a legislative agenda. You’d vote for an MP with whose manifesto you agreed the most. A group of MPs who shared broadly common goals and manifesto pledges would form a government. The government would be responsible for putting forward a sensible legislative programme that was fiscally sound.
So, an MP wouldn’t be a glorified hand-raiser; she would have to consider the work of pariliament carefully and, I’ll warrant, take more responsibility for good quality legislation than a well-whipped MP nowadays. Oh look, we’ve just answered your last point and abolished the whip! Job’s a good ‘un!
(More of this please, everyone. The idea was unlikely to work straight out of the box but constructive criticism surfaces issues to be addressed and thus improvements to the scheme. Perhaps it’s my Physics degree and belief in the scientific method at work: a hypothesis becomes a theory only when it can survive every test thrown at it. Fail just once and the hypothesis has to be abandoned and a new hypothesis formed. Challenge the concept, please: I look forward to seeing whether the idea survives or whether it has a fatal flaw.)
I thought I would add a link to ‘They Work For You’ enter your postcode answer a few questions and find out which MP stands for your views – it claims to make picking who to vote for easy ..
http://election.theyworkforyou.com/
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