“Do you vote in political elections?”
This is objectively hilarious after yesterday’s post. Um, yes. Actually, a confession: I only vote if I can say hand on heart I know what it is I am voting for. There is one election I don’t vote in: Police and Crime Commissioners. I find the structure of the position itself abhorrent and the problem is, no matter who I vote for to perform the role, the job itself must exist within those constraints. I’ve only missed voting on one of these so far, but I’m not sure what would change my mind. There was, one other election I didn’t vote in. I chose not to vote in the final European Elections in 2019. The problem I had was, what was I voting for? If Brexit happened in the next few months, then the person I voted for wouldn’t sit for a term. Was it a second referendum? By voting was I endorsing that strategy, one I had strong mixed feelings on? Politicians spin the meaning of votes all the time, but this one, I felt distressed at having no agency over what my vote meant. So I stayed at home, and unlike the PCC vote, I felt awful. I still feel awful about it. But I stand by the decision. If I believe there is a duty to inform yourself before you vote, how can I hold that belief and still vote under such ambiguity?
I guess a lot of people would call that overthinking. Heaven forbid I ever get accused of doing that. I just wrote an entire paragraph of oversharing political thoughts and decided nah, not for here. I’ve saved it but the tl;dr is Europe is probably better off without us, we don’t have a plan, and it’s going to be an ‘interesting’ few years…
Can you see why I don’t go political here? What a mess. Writing wise, well that’s also a mess at the moment, but we’re getting there.
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