When politicians try to be cool
The electoral commission is reporting that record numbers of people are registering to vote this year, and a lot of the credit for that is being given to online registration.
In 2001, the voter turnout was just 59%, and this was the first time since World War Two that voter turnout had fallen below 70%. Back in 1950, the voter turnout was 84%, a figure since matched only by last year's Scottish referendum. In 2005 the voter turnout increased slightly compared to 2001, from 59% to 61%, and at the last election in 2010 it was 64%. The issue is not just that people choose not to vote, but also that, according to research conducted in 2014, some 7.5 million eligible people are not even on the electoral register.
With the introduction on online registration this year, the Electoral Commission has seen a big increase in people registering online. Since the election campaign began, some 2.3 million people registered using the online service, which included 700,000 applications by people in the 16-24 age bracket. The peak activity, when 18,372 went online to register, happened just five minutes after Ed Milliband had been interviewed on the BBC, although whether that was connected in any way remains to be seen.
With figures like these, politicians will recognise that the internet and communications is making the electoral process more accessible and that should be a great argument for a bigger push to get affordable and quality internet access available across the UK.
We should also be asking if the time has come to consider electronic voting. Registering online has proved a success but people still have to queue up at the polling booth and that may be where the enthusiasm wanes, and may seem outdated to the younger generation who have always known mobile phones and the internet. Online voting may also make the process more accessible to people with disabilities. Research by Scope on last year's local elections indicated that one in three polling stations was not fully accessible and that whilst overall turnout was 65%, among the disabled electorate it was just 33%.
But instead of embracing the opportunities for society, I expect we will see the next tranche of politicians embracing it for themselves, trying to look hip and cool. At one time, politicians had to be seen playing a game of football at a carefully stage-managed photo opportunity. In the future we can expect this stage management to move more to the social media sphere and we'll have more things like the now-abandoned WebCameron video blogs which talked at us, not to us.
On Sunday 12th April, Hilary Clinton used Twitter to announce that she will be standing as a candidate for the Democrat nomination in next year's US elections. To make sure no-one missed the announcement, her campaign office pre-announced on the Friday that she would make her announcement via Twitter, on Sunday at noon Eastern time, from an aeroplane, whilst somewhere over Iowa. If you pre-announce an announcement, can it still be an announcement? But she did it from her own personal Twitter account, so hey, she must be cool. An hour later her Twitter stream added "This account will be run by campaign staff from now on". Well, maybe not so cool after all.
29th April 2015
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.