Are you going to vote?

This isn't a blog about who I think you should vote for, in fact I'm not going to even mention the political parties, or who I am going to vote for. (Although if you know me well, you could probably make a pretty good guess.)  This blog is about actually voting, are you going to vote? I should perhaps also say that this is really directed at the coming New Zealand election, but really it applies to any election, any where in the World, and the New Zealand election isn't the only major political event on the World stage in which people are voting this week.  I'm not going to talk about Scotland either though, or Fiji for that matter.

The voter turn out in the last New Zealand election was 74.2%, which sounds like quite a few people, compared to the UK for example it's quite good, in their last election only 65.1% of voters turned out.  But, it still means that over a quarter of the people who are able to vote, didn't.  There are all kinds of reasons why people don't vote, but really everyone should vote.  It's easy to say that politics doesn't interest you, or that it doesn't matter who you vote for, they're all as bad as one another, but really that's not the point.

It's really easy to fall into the trap of giving up on politics, especially with all that's currently going on, 'dirty politics' and the like.  It's all too easy to think that it's all corrupt and nothing to do with you.  But actually politics is all to do with everyone.  If you live in a country, drive on the roads, got to the doctors, shop in the shops, send your children to the schools, then all of those things mean that you are dealing with 'politics' every day of your life. There's no getting away from it, and although it's easy to think that it doesn't effect you, it really does, and placing your vote, whoever it is for, even if you go and spoil your paper rather than actually vote for a party, it's really important to actually use that vote.

People haven't always all been able to vote, people often remember that it was denied to Women, but it's easy to forget that at one time it was only the men of power who were able to have a say.  These days, we can all cast that vote, make our mark and try and influence the way that we are governed.  Don't waste that chance, you live in a place that allows you to do that, and many many people around the world, even today, don't have that luxury. Don't throw away your chance, use your vote, have your say.