This is a great idea! And whether it works or not it represents a fascinating attempt by ordinary voters to make their votes count for more!
This is the idea: if you are a Labour voter in Hazel Grove your vote won’t count for very much, and if you are a Liberal in High Peak the same is true. But if you are a Liberal in High Peak then if you could persuade a Labour voter in Hazel Grove to vote Liberal you might see a Liberal elected there. And how would you persuade them to do that? By promising to vote Labour yourself in High Peak instead of Liberal. It’s a way of you both transferring your vote to where it might get you what you want.
And there is a website which will help you to gain that confidence.
You can regard it as voting tactically to topple a Tory, but with the added incentive that another voter is doing the same for you in another constituency. It requires a lot of trust but you can’t lose much really.
As a Labour voter myself, but with a lot of sympathy for the LibDems policies, and very little for those of the Conservative Party, then I would certainly sign up to this if I lived in Hazel Grove.
I’d love to see Andrew Bingham lose his seat in High Peak.
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What a sick idea.
Lots of my family live in the High Peak and why the shell should people outside of that area have any say in who represents them.That is actually what this idea is doing I wonder how you or people who comment on here would like it if the reverse happened and a Tory was voted into represent you instead of a Labour candidate.It is a disgraceful use of democracy.
Dennis – indeed? What the shell!
On the OHs Tablet so obviously a spelling mistake but does not alter the morality of this idea,it smells.
As a conviction Lib Dem in High Peak who’s voting Labour to try to oust Bingham, and who has registered for this scheme, I don’t see any problem with it. The only person making the decision who to vote for in High Peak is me – a High Peak constituent, and the same applies with my counterpart in Hazel Grove.
It’s no worse than normal tactical voting, and in practice I suspect it will actually change very few votes: someone who’s not prepared to vote tactically on principle won’t take part in the scheme.
(If we had a voting system that was fit for purpose, we wouldn’t have to bother with this nonsense and could actually vote positively for the candidate we like best, rather than voting against the one we like least, but that’s another story.)
Brilliant.
If you need cheering up and haven’t watched it already.
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn ‘What Was Done’ *HQ Official*
Thanks for highlighting this Mark,
It’s looking v.close in both constituencies – every vote could count, please can everyone share this where appropriate.
I would love to see both Bingham and William Wragg losing their seats, the latter is regarded as such a liability by his own party that it’s believed that he is under orders to keep his head down and not campaign in this election – no public meetings, no hustings etc and all the campaign literature is about Theresa May. Such is his unpopularity amongst many of his constituents, a grass roots campaign group called ‘Marple Matters’ has been created to expose his regressive politics and lack of service to his constituents. They use an amusing twitter hashtag called ‘#womenagainstwilly’
https://mobile.twitter.com/marplematters
Until we get a proper PR system in place this is just about the only way to make the FPTP more representative of most peoples wishes. Pity there were not more formal agreements between the other parties. I can understand possibly why as the Tories could use it against them in an “undermining democracy” meme. Of course we do not have democracy in this country in any meaningfull way. Surely it needs to be anyone but the Tories or do people want more false austerity foisted on them?
I have voted for 50 years in several constituencies (not at the same time!). Not once has any candidate I voted for been elected ……not sure what that says about my opinions! So in the 2015 election I decided to vote tactically as the candidate expected to win was downright useless. He won, of course, but at least I felt that I had tried. I am going to vote tactically again. Wish we had a sensible system of PR. The referendum on PR was so manipulated – no wonder it failed. We have no democracy in this country any more – not sure if we ever had. No wonder there is apathy in the young.
Great idea.
Turkeys don’t generally vote for Christmas so any way that voters can send a message to the politicians that it’s time for change and a fairer system then surely we should take it?
The two main parties are I suspect fairly happy with the status quo, but are we the voters?
We fund this farce that masquerades as democracy, we fund this gravy train of 650 + 800 and does it deliver value for money? I’m sure there are some amongst the number who work very hard, but seriously, it’s time for reform and time that the palace recognised the disquiet out here in the real world?
“Turkeys don’t generally vote for Christmas”
Dave thought that but he was wrong