or Why I Think Tactical Voting Is Bad and Wrong by Simon Wistow, aged 32 1/3
It's election day in the UK at the moment and, for those of you not playing along at home, it's both incredibly important and incredibly interesting (more so, even, than "normal" elections).
Historically (for certain values of "Historic") the UK has had three main parties: the Conservatives (analogous to the Republicans), Labour (analogous to the Democrats) and the Liberal Democrats or LibDems as they're more often known (no real analogy). Of course the analogies aren't perfect, in fact they're pretty crappy. They're based on the fallacy that Politics is somehow a one-dimensional space with only shades of "Left" and "Right" to chose from. Also, the UK is far, far to the left of even the Democrats. Hell, even our far rightwing neo-nazi party, the BNP (British National Party) are, on a lot of policies, more left wing than the Democrats.
Power has generally shifted between Labour and the Conservatives. From 1979 to 1997 we had 5 successive Conservative governments - 3 under Thatcher and 2 under Major. By the end the Conservatives were a broken party - tired, almost universally loathed and ridden with infighting and scandal.
Meanwhile, Labour had rebranded itself as New Labour, had moved to the centre and were espousing a "Third Way". They used terms like "Cool Britannia".
But now, 13 years later, they're tired too. And people are angry with them about many, many things - not least the Iraq war and the "sexed up" intelligence dossier, ID cards, the economy.
But people are still angry with the Conservatives. Even after a decade and a half and a similar centrist policy shift people still think of them as the cold hearted party of the rich and intolerant.
And so we've seen the rise of the LibDems - the latter part of this election campaigns has been dominated by their leader Nick Clegg and the somewhat desperate attempts by the Conservative press and the Murdoch owned papers to discredit him.
But the problem is that the UK uses a election system called First Past The Post - I won't go into the details of it but one of the major drawbacks is that due to the details of the seats system it means that it's likely that even if the Lib Dems get a similar proportion of the popular vote to the two toher parties they'll not get as many seats in parliament.
And people are quite angry about this.
It also gives people the impression that voting for the LibDems is a wasted vote. And that since what they actually want is "Not Conservative" what they should instead do is vote for Labour instead. And that is completely understandable.
There are several problems with it though and it's all to do with information flow. True, if you vote for the LibDems then they may not get enough seats but you're signaling support for the them (as expressed by the popular vote) and then more people are likely to take them seriously and vote for them at the next election and then more people will vote for them and ... it all gets better in the long term (theoretically at least).
Additionally but related - by tactically voting you're screwing me over. You may not think so but you are. The reason is that I should chose my vote based on the information available - I read the manifestos, go to the hustings and watch the debates. Then I vote and I make my vote based on the way the system is set up (i.e FPTP). It's the only thing I can - anything else is madness.
But by tactically voting you've unilaterally decided that the current system is wrong (which I'm not disagreeing with) and that it should be changed to Single Transferable Vote (i.e the system where you rank your choices but if your preferred candidate doesn't win then your second choice gets your vote instead) and then you do it WITHOUT TELLING ME.
Now it's impossible for me to vote rationally since I have to guess what you're going to do. And what you're going to do is based on your guess on what I'm going to do. It's somewhat similar to the beach choice paradox - it's a sunny day so I shoudl go to the beach. But everyone will think that and so it will be crowded. So I won't go. But if I'm not going to go then maybe everyone one else won't go. So it won't be crowded. So I should go. But if everyone realises that as well then maybe it will be crowded and ...
In short - by tactically voting you've taken away my ability to vote rationally. You have, to a certain extent, disenfranchised me. Fuck you.
So what should you do instead?
Campaign for electoral change - get the system switched to Proportional Representation or, my personal choice, Single Transferable Vote. It may not have the immediate effects you're looking for but it will be better in the long run.
Yes, I realise that all systems are susceptible to Tactical Voting (keywords Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem) but hopefully a switch to PR or STV will remove one of the main reasons (i.e "the wasted vote" argument) for it. And means I can make rational choices again.
This is a rather hurriedly dumped out argument, rushed out because the margins of Twitter are too narrow to contain the debate. I understand why people vote tactically and I don't think they're malicious and I can even agree with some people's justifications ... I just think they're wrong.
To inject some levity - here's John "Monty Python" Cleese in an amusing Party Political Broadcast about Proportional Representation
