Vote For Policies Not Parties

I have long been a supporter of "radical' democracy for the basic and simple reason that ours doesn't work properly. It does not provide the framework for all the people in our country to have, as standard, a proper say in the way our country is run and as a result their lives are worse of for it.

I have often seen simple and logical ways of possibly improving our democracy. Ideas like changing the seating arrangements of parliaments. Instead of having all members of the same party together in a bunch, why not have members sit in their respective areas. For me this would lead to less partisan behaviour and more behaviour based on local issues with members banding together to sort out matters relative to their own voters patches. Is that not why we voted for them? To represent our interests? This may have only a small effect and there are possible problems with it too but why not give it a go and see if it makes a difference?

Another idea that I heard muted was that we should not get names of parties on ballot papers,  just the names of candidates. Whilst this would definitely be a radical step, I can see part of the rationale behind those who talk of it. It would certainly make the electorate seek out what the actual person stood for and also make the candidate work much harder to get their personal message over to the voters.

The above may be a step too far for most, but what about the electorate seeing all of the party's policies without seeing which party it belonged to? A blind taste test? Well that actually ALREADY exists..... at Vote For Policies.

This site has been in existence for quite a few years now and provides the user with policies on many different areas from each of the major parties without divulging who's policy it is. The user then reads the policies in their chosen fields and clicks on which policy most suits their own views. At the end of the survey it shows what party policy you chose in each section.

You must choose at least 4 out of the 9 available categories of Crime, Education, Health/NHS, Democracy, Environment, Immigration, Economy, Europe, and Welfare. I would urge you to select them all when trying it.

The results can be listed in many ways including by your constituency, and country amongst others so it is worth looking at the results in different ways to see how your views compare to others in all the result criteria.

The results have left some people absolutely astounded. Astounded in the fact that the party that they thought stood for what they believed in, actually really didn't and that the policies that they preferred were actually being provided by a completely different party.

As in the graphic above, with 556,798 people to date having completed the survey, 27.77% of people should actually be voting Green with their nearest rivals Labour way back on 20.11%. So the basic bottom line from this is that if people voted for what they stood for, The Green Party would be in government with a majority!!!!

There are a couple of caveats to this. The policies that are used on the site are form manifestos of the last General Election in 2010. This information is quite prominently displayed on the site. Also, especially from a Scottish perspective, the SNP's manifesto was not included.

The really good news is that the site is being updated for the 2015 General Election and the SNP's manifesto is being included this time round. The best news of all that they have published the fact that their updated site will be ready by February 19th. So not long to wait until we can see how this years manifestos will affect the results.

Go on give it a go, it may well surprise you.