A vote against contempt

21 November 2022

Welcome to 'Stray Thoughts', where the Eureka Street editorial team muses on ethical and social challenges we've noted throughout the week. The recent US midterm elections have been another reminder of the way predictions are well and good in democracy, but it’s the vote that counts. Though the way the votes are counted counts too. As does who votes. Democratic government is very much about ‘ends’, about the decisions that it allows. But it’s about means, too. Democratic systems of government recognise the ends are contested, and rather than imposing mine over yours, we seek a way to compromise, to retain space where we all might live with integrity. Who and how we vote has profound implications for this. British politics has been rocked in recent months by the revolving door of prime ministers. Liz Truss was booted for enacting policies she was committed to and had articulated in a campaign aimed at winning over rusted-on Conservative Party members. At least in the US, primary votes — where party members select their candidates — are followed by general elections where everyone can vote. Except that those who vote seem to be increasingly partisan. The challenge is not so much to win the middle but to increase those baying in your partisan corner.

In Northern Ireland, where partisanship of a particular kind has had bloody consequences in living memory, the people voted in February, but no government has been formed since. Power sharing between parties is baked into the governing arrangements in the north, but Brexit and the difficulties of the European Union border with the United Kingdom have seen Unionists step away from the negotiating table. So, who votes and how matters, but so to do the underlying arrangements of government and the culture that informs them.

This latter point is a guard against Australians, like me, who are very proud of our system of compulsory voting as a mechanism for ensuring common ground is found and consensus prized. Our voting system might give us the best chance of this, but a deeper social and cultural life is surely required to foster the conditions for democracy.

'How do we overcome this corrosive element in our common life? How do we continue to hold what is valuable in our worldview, and articulate what is disconcertingly short of it, without condemning others who have different views?'

Something like this is the argument of Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly in their recent

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A vote against contempt

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