Some of the worst ways to vote

Gavin Maclean

Opinion

There are lots of bad ways to vote, but the worst are for change, expediency and isolated single issues. They are insidious as they appeal to people who are otherwise quite clever and passionate.

Expediency. I was shocked when someone close to me said recently that voting for the Green Party would be a waste, because even if they got into coalition Labour would just do its own thing. Someone who comes up with wonderful, practical thoughts on policies that would do good, against climate change and against poverty, was actually suggesting I should waste my once-in-three-years chance to cast an honest vote, and vote not just cynically, but dishonestly.

Expediency is always uncertain, based on beliefs about how other people will vote: “They will be dishonest, so I will be dishonest.” It’s how to get the government you deserve instead of the government you want.

Time for a change? This is almost too negative to contemplate. The uncertainties are enormous, with the possibilities of not much changing, or the unknown devil being worse than the devil you know, especially if it’s You-Know-Who, with their record of putting business before welfare, and pretending that nature doesn’t exist. To use this as a guide to voting is simply failing to deal with the detail.

It’s hard to believe there are people who think like this, which is not really thinking at all—but they are dangerously many.

Single issues. We all have to prioritise and single out some issues as more important than others, but their ranking is in their interconnections. Some strongly held views may be valid and affect you deeply, but they are often separate from the main business of government.

The big broad issues, without question, are climate change (and other planetary overshoots) and inequality; and they are closely interlinked, both being caused by greed. The big issue on a personal scale is the cost of living, which is a result of over-using resources, and affects people unequally, and their poverty partly or totally underlies all the problems of ill health, crime and violence.

Unfortunately, National clings to more growth to solve the problems, when of course growth created them. Labour, slightly more compassionate, tries to help people and nature on the one hand, and still pander to business and the economy on the other; as if they are competing factors, when in fact the economy should be simply serving, not ruling.

It should, and could, be wonderful.

The Greens and Te Pāti Māori stand apart in their determination to use economics for its proper purpose, and thus embrace a solution to major problems.

Perhaps there’s another bad way to vote, and that’s by not understanding MMP. Many voters who would like to support the Green Party continue to vote Labour in order to keep National out. They seem not to realise that, given that any Labour government will have to be at least a Labour-Green government, a vote for the Greens counts exactly as much towards getting Labour in as a vote for Labour does. Exactly. This is so simple, yet it still escapes some people.

What’s more, with the Greens polling almost half as much as Labour, they could be getting a very strong voice in that coalition, and they’ve always managed to punch above their weight anyway, when it comes to persuasion and building relationships.

Labour supporters who want a capital gains tax: here’s your chance.