Wasted vote?

I have never been entirely comfortable with the idea of a “wasted vote”. I was prompted to think about this again by Humza Yousaf’s comments about a vote for the Scottish Greens in the 2024 UK general election being a “wasted vote”. Surely democracy is about voting for the party that you believe should win and not for the party you think will win. If you can do both, that’s fine. But voting isn’t supposed to be about picking a winner as in betting on a horse. It is supposed to be about endorsing the policies, positions and principles represented by a political party. It is about registering your support for the things the party is supposed to stand for. whether or not the party’s candidate wins, your vote should send a message. It should have an effect, however small.

To say that a vote is wasted is to admit that it can have no effect. A vote can only truly be wasted if the political and electoral system is such that votes other than for the eventual winner are null. If votes other than for the winning candidate cannot possibly have any effect because the system renders them meaningless, then almost inevitably the majority of voters in a UK general election are effectively disenfranchised. Commonly, around two-thirds of votes in a first past the post (FPTP) election are “wasted” because it’s a case of winner takes all. The system totally discounts all votes that aren’t for the winner. Those votes can’t have even an ancillary or subsidiary effect. They don’t register. If they are sending a message, that message is ignored.

Think of it like shopping. Your every purchase is a vote for that product. The ‘winner’ is the brand leader. The brand leader is produced by a company known to viciously exploit its workers and suppliers while doing considerable environmental damage through various cost-cutting measures. By contrast, the manufacturer of the alternative brand is known to treat employees well, pay suppliers fairly and promptly and respect the environment – making it more expensive than the brand leader. Being a good citizen and a decent human being, you opt to pay the premium and purchase the alternative brand. You ‘vote’ for that company and the principles on which it operates.

Yours is but one purchase. Perhaps a regular purchase. The equivalent of voting for the same party in every election. But you pay that premuim and make that purchase knowing that it will register. It will have an effect. The market responds to consumer behaviour. It cannot do otherwise. Even a relatively small shift in consumer behaviour can trigger major transformations. Prices move. Supermarket shelves ‘suddenly’ feature more of the alternative brand and display it more prominently resulting in further increases in sales. Think of ‘fair trade’ instant coffee. Every supermarket now stocks at eye-level what used to be tucked away in a small space on the bottom shelf. Individual purchases made this happen. People buying (voting for) the alternative brand instead of the brand leader had an effect. A message was sent to the market, and the market took heed.

That doesn’t happen in the British political/electoral system. If you vote for an alternative to the winner, nothing changes. Voting for the Greens in a Westminster election doesn’t result in implementation of green policies. Voting in Scotland for a nominally pro-independence party doesn’t take us any closer to ending the Union. The winner of the election takes all the power. The system is brutal. It doesn’t respond to more subtle patterns of voter behaviour. Not even if they aren’t actually all that subtle. If every Westminster constituency in Scotland returned candidates from nominally pro-independence parties, nothing would change. One or other of the two British establishment parties would still win. Which one is irrelevant. The consequences for Scotland are the same either way.

In Westminster general elections, Scotland never gets the government its people vote for. Occasionally and quite coincidentally, voters in England choose the same party as voters in Scotland so it looks as if we get the government we voted for. But we get that government, not because we have voted for it, but because England has voted for it. Our votes have no effect. The very idea of a winner in the Scottish part of a UK general election is vacuous. There is no prize for the ‘winner’ in Scotland. The winner in England gets the only prize there is. There is nothing for Scotland.

Humza Yousaf almost certainly wasn’t aware of it when he made his remark about a vote for the Scottish Greens being “wasted”, but he was passing judgement on the entire system. I think we can be quite certain that he failed to realise that while what he said of a vote for the Greens is true, it is also true of a vote for the SNP. And any other party standing candidates in Scotland. It may be claimed that a vote for the SNP sends a message about support for independence. This cannot be so because the SNP has no plan or proposal for restoring independence. And it wouldn’t matter if they did. Because even if a message is sent, it is not received. It goes entirely unheeded. It is certainly not acted on.

Every vote is a political statement. Every vote indicates a choice. Even not voting at all is a choice. It is a statement to the effect that this voter chooses not to participate. The message may be vague and ambiguous. But it doesn’t matter because the system isn’t listening. If a vote for the Greens is “wasted”, so is a vote for the SNP. Or Alba Party. Or ISP. Or any party operating within the British system that is imposed on Scotland. This is by design. The purpose of the Union was to render Scotland powerless relative to England. Within that British system, we are powerless. We have been powerless for well over three centuries. We will always be powerless so long as we comply with the rules of a system designed to render us powerless.

The only way the people of Scotland can make any kind of impact with our votes is by defying the rules of the system. The rules which stipulate that we may only choose one of the options presented – none of which can possibly have any effect. I would suggest we defy those rules. Since it serves no purpose within the British system, I suggest you #RepurposeYourVote in order to give it purpose. Write #EndTheUnion across your ballot paper. That message will register if enough people participate.

Defiance won’t change anything. But neither will compliance. So, you’ve nothing to lose. You might as well get some personal gratification out of the exercise. At least your vote won’t be “wasted”.