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Do you think this is the best we can do? Is this what we deserve?

Here’s a thought...

The Government gets to govern because about 33m people vote once every 5 years. Of those, about 13m vote for the winning party.

So if a competing political system had more than 33m people vote more frequently than every 5 years, and if more than 13m agreed who should be in charge, wouldn’t it have a greater claim to democratic legitimacy?

Before you get carried away or fearful of dangerous populist revolutions, instability, or annual Brexit referenda, this isn’t where I’m going with this.

But 34 million isn’t very many people. There are more registered voters though - about 47 million. (Which means 13 million people registered to vote but didn’t actually end up voting.)

58 million adults have smartphones. Almost 50 million of those adults use their phone for more than 10 minutes per day.

So really it’s not a big deal to have more than 34 million people ‘voting’ on their phone every few months.

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Now.. in other news, there’s the UK has something called the Electoral Commission. It oversees the fairness and honestly of elections — ie it’s the organisation which stops us having rigged elections (and becoming Russia or Zimbabwe.)

It is independent and neutral. At least.. it was until a few days ago. Because a few days ago the Government

pushed through a law⁠

which removes its neutrality and puts its power in the hands of government Ministers.

That’s right: The Government which is in power will be allowed to say how elections are run.

That’s the same Ministers who will happily lie to your face about parties, tax loopholes, and PPE corruption are now in charge of making sure that the elections that re-elect them are free and fair.

Do you believe they can be trusted with this power?

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IGNORE BELOW THIS LINE

Some stats

13,966,454 voted for Conservatives

32,014,110 total voters

47,587,254 regsitered voters

66.8 million adults

87% (47.6m) of (58.1m) adults own smartphones

Source data

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https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/general-election-2019-turnout/⁠

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_election#Analysis⁠

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https://cybercrew.uk/blog/smartphone-usage-statistics-uk/⁠

⁠

https://votes.parliament.uk/Votes/Lords/Division/2831⁠

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