I exercised my democratic duty this morning and voted for London's mayor, even though I don't particularly favour any of the candidates and am not sure of the importance of the position. I still think it's important to vote and I ultimately decided that I wanted to try and stop Boris Johnson getting in, even though somewhere inside me I have a sneaking desire to see how he would do at the job. But only for ten minutes - not four years. Even I think that it is possible to take a joke too far. Alas I am not confident that my fellow city dwellers feel the same.
I didn't feel any great compunction to vote either for Ken or Labour (and they're not exactly the same thing) but knew he was the only real option if Boris was to be kept out. So I assuaged my conscience by voting for Sian Berry of the Green party as my first choice and then putting Ken as number two. Which is the same as voting for Ken, but having the additional benefit of registering support for a party concerned with the environment. The good thing about being able to put down two votes is that it means you can vote tactically, whilst also showing your actual preference, without wasting a vote. I'd like to see this system adopted for all elections.
It seems likely that it will all be for nothing anyway, as Boris looks set for victory, but we'll see.
I still quite like the whole ceremony of voting - going into my local school, getting my name looked up on a register, (hold on this seems to be going a different way than I intended) then being asked to go into a private booth before making my mark and then squeezing it into the box (really I didn't intend this to happen - I really wanted to celebrate democracy. What is wrong with me?). It still feels like a terrifically grown up thing to be doing, even though I've been doing it now for 22 years. Why on earth does anyone think that I might be qualified to have a say in this. In essence that is the drawback with democracy. People are idiots. You wouldn't expect a business to work effectively if you gave everyone an equal say in how it worked, or even who ran it, so why should it work for a country?
It probably doesn't work. But it works less badly than a lot of the alternatives. And it was a good feeling to probably fail to make a difference.
