By Peter Jones
Recently I had the pleasure of talking to the sixth form at one of the grammar schools in Aylesbury. I do this every year and every year I am pleased to note that the students are well informed, sensible, polite and above all interested in politics and the political process. Of course it wouldn’t do for the editors of the popular papers to write about young people in that way, but I suspect that only a very small minority of young people are the unkempt yobbos of popular mythology, by far the majority are well brought-up and intelligent.
As part of my talk I asked how many of them were going to be eligible to vote in the elections this June. About half put their hands up, I suspect that the rest were not going to be 18-years-old in time for polling day. Then I asked how many were actually going to vote. Substantially fewer hands were in the air.
At that point I must confess I went off into a bit of rant. It maybe isn’t completely true that their grandmothers died so that they could have the vote, but it’s a good enough line. Most of the pupils had the decency to look embarrassed. But the sad fact is that on 4th June the turnout in the county council and European elections, even in our part of Chiltern that traditionally has a high turnout, probably won’t be much more than 50%. Poor show!
So my purpose in this article is not to persuade you to vote for any particular party, but just to ask you to vote at all.
And if you are now thinking “There’s no point, they are all the same” then please think again. The European election is counted on a proportional representation system, which means that every vote really does count.
Editors note: Peter Jones is a Chiltern DC councillor representing Ballinger, South Heath and Chartridge. For those with a keen interest in these matters proportional representation (PR) was first introduced in the 19th Century for elections to Adelaide City Council.