Election nasties

[caddyman]

I was a little dismayed to find on the way home last night and on the way in to work this morning that the BNP are handing out election leaflets outside Totteridge and Whetstone station. I didn’t realise on my way home yesterday and actually took one, though I only had it for the five paces it took to pass the litter bin.

I’ve not seen any BNP literature or candidates in the area before and it’s rather dismaying to find that they have suddenly sprung up now. I can’t imagine that they will get any seats on Barnet council, but who knows. I must check the results for the last set of local elections and see if they had a candidate then and if so, what proportion of the vote the buggers got.

Comments

Obligatory "that's a non sequitur" riposte

[pauln.livejournal.com]

Debates over Transferable votes and PR systems are a separate issue. I don't think you should use BNP activity to knock them.

How much influence extreme minority parties have in PR systems depends on how they're structured. All sensible systems that include a list element (Germany is a prime example, Italy is a very poor one) have thresholds that must be achieved in order to get representation. This is designed precisely to prevent the extremists and ultra-minorities.

Ultimately this is a representative democracy. The way to beat the BNP is to campaign against them, to expose their leaders for the racist, violent bully-boys they are and convince people not to vote for them.

Re: Obligatory "that's a non sequitur" riposte

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

Nonetheless, it is under such systems that 'fringe' groups of the right and left get a toe hold. It is telling that most of their candidates are 'All-London' candidates, which suggests that they think they mamy get a sufficient percentage of the popular vote to get some members elected where they would have no chance in the first past the post elections in local constituencies.

Voter turn out is the key; most people rightly have an inherent dislike of extreme groups, yet most people are completely apathetic to the democratic process. Sadly, extreme groups are more motivated to go out and manipulate the system and more likely to energise their support, thus allowing a small, unrepresentative minority have a grfeater percentage of votes cast.

Emm's comment "just in case you weren't thinking of casting your vote" is the pertinent one here, I think.