I’m quite political and I really enjoy talking about politics with other people, whether we have the same views and opinions or we differ. However I don’t often get the opportunity to do this as my circle of friends at university have not formed their own opinion on politics or they don’t really care about politics.
I find it really difficult to understand why people do not have an interest in who is in power of the country they live in, and why you would not want to affect, in a small way, the outcome of the elections. Firstly for people who think that their vote does not make a difference or what effect will it make if you do or don’t vote …..
If all the people who didn’t vote because they thought it wouldn’t make a difference, voted, then that collective force would make a substantial difference.
While I think that everyone should vote, I also belive in your democratic right not to vote if that is your choice but not for reasons such as “I don’t know enough about politics.” or “It doesn’t affect me.” We live in a society where we believe that everything should be fed to us on a spoon, either through the media or through education, sometimes you actually have to go and educate yourself to be able to further yourself. One of the biggest problems I find which I have seen in the attitudes of many of my friends is the opinion that it doesn’t affect individuals.
This view is so untrue, if the youth of 2010 had cared about politics when the last election took place then maybe I would not have been paying 9 grand for a university education, or my course at university would not be getting scraped because it is not viewed as a credible academic subject.
I do think that part of the problem with, particularly with the youngest voters, is that there is not enough engagement with them. I never really remember getting taught in-depth about political parties and their different values, I taught myself and I was lucky enough to have my Mum who also told me about them and how you vote, if my Mum had not told me how a voting card worked then I would never had known. This is where I think part of the problem lies, for young people, not every household has an adult who is political engaged or is even engaged with their child, who then looses the opportunity to be engaged with politics.
I also don’t think that enough is being done by the political system to engage with the youngest of the voters, maybe this is because the youngest voters are wild cards and the majority of which have not developed a political opinion and their vote has not been secured so by trying to engage them it is not the safest bet as their undecided. I acknowledge that there has been some progress in trying to engage the young, labour have said they would lower the voting age to 16 – why when you can not even get the 18 year olds to engage with politics and vote? While the Lib-Dems secured 10 million pounds to encourage students to vote. While this is progress, do these incentives promise the youngest voters more political engagement and address the problems that young people face or are they empty promises like in 2010 when the Lib-Dems promised student that the party would not raise student tuition fees, they forgot to add “unless we get into bed with the Conservatives.”
I will be voting on the 7th of May to help affect the collective force of the public in deciding who runs Great Britain. As a woman I think that it is so important to exercise the right to vote and express your political opinions. I would encourage anyone else to do the same.
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