Summary #PROTEST VOTE

The younger generations wish to see change, they are now a disenfranchised minority whom need a cause to follow.

CST thinks that by the simple spoiling their ballot papers - may get them more than they think....

To Ballot or to Spoil?

CST has long argued for change – sensible but radical change, change that improves the lives of most people.  CST has also argued that to expect the current (Western) style ‘democracies’ to create radical change is like asking the bankers to create a world without money.

We need to act before external factors (resources, technology, climate), impose change that is far beyond our control. Is it possible to manoeuvre the current political systems to create radical change?

The younger generations, feel (and are), disenfranchised from UK politics.  Many are not even registered to vote, many more won’t bother.  It is not that they are un-political or apathetic; it is that they feel they will not enable change whatever they vote.

We must still use our ballot papers, and deliberately spoil them with "#PROTEST VOTE". Everyone using this same clear comment creates a real protest vote.

Spoiling your ballot with"#PROTEST VOTE" would automatically get massive media air-time and would become a legitimate vote - democratically registered within the current system.

(Some people have commentated on this protest vote and suggested that spoilt votes are not counted. However, since the overall turnout is known, the spoils are also know by reference to the counted votes. So a big increase in the spoilt vote would indeed be reported).

If enough people ‘spoiled’ and continued to do so, the ‘political classes' would eventually be forced to recognise this ‘thinking minority' (or majority?).  No longer could politicians of the day say they were elected by the people as a whole, their arguments for being mandated to govern would strike a hollow note.

As this idea takes hold, in future elections, perhaps across many parliamentary seats, the ‘spoils’ would get a majority or at least a large proportion of the votes.  Such action would lead to intense media coverage and provide a constant platform for ‘reformers’ to air their views for radical change – change to the very structure of the political system as it would prove, beyond any doubt, the lack of true democracy within the current political system.

CST has already made a stab at what radical reform may look like, (see ‘better political systems’).  While Russell Brand, Occupy, et al argue for ‘a revolution’, there are few, if any, rational paths put forward that could take on the current political processes and win.  Few people would trust such a loose 'revolutionary' movement without a clear structure for change.

What we need is a path that can create radical change, but change that encompasses commonsense values and within a new process that can be seen as workable, and here it is:-

See 'Blue-Print for a new politics'

CST always has solutions, that's what we do.