Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Lets go out and vote: It will make a difference

I believe, going out and voting for someone, anyone, is much better option, than just saying No. Even if our candidate gets less than 1% of vote, political parties will begin to look at us as a potential support base, and therefore more amenable to listen to us. If our preferred candidate secures 2-3% of the votes, he may be taken seriously, since he might be in a position to make or break the winner. If our preferred candidate secures 5% of the vote, other parties will sit up and take notice, and begin to woo us, and our candidate. And if we put up a candidate whom we believe in, and try to campaign to widen the social-political support base, and secure 10% of the votes, established parties will seriously seek us to join a coalition or an alliance, even when our candidate loses. And if we succeed in expanding further to 15% of the total voters, we will have a realistic chance of seeing our candidate win a multi-cornered contest. The advantages of going out and vote are much more real in today's political context, than we may actually think. With increasingly competitive political conditions, every vote single vote really counts, it will be taken note of by all the political contenders, quite irrespective of whether our own preferred candidate wins or loses.

* percentage of votes mentioned are out of the total registered voters in a constituency. If we assume a 50% turnout, then above numbers will seem to be even more realistic. A 15% of total voters will mean 30% of the votes cast, when the turn out is 50%.

~ Barun Mitra

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