So as you are no doubt all aware there is a general election coming up here in the UK. On May 6th the country will be called upon to cast their votes as to which bunch of crooks political party they want to govern us for the next five years. Now I plan to vote, I really do, only I am really struggling with regards to whom to vote for and even whether there is any point in voting in the first place. As such I thought I would ask you guys for your thoughts on the matter.

Ok firstly, as I know not all of you lot live in the UK, maybe I should explain quickly, and no doubt badly, how things work in this country. Very basically the country is divided up into a number of constituencies, each of which has its own local Member of Parliament representing them. In a general election you vote for the local MP you want and the votes are added up to see which party wins each constituency. The number of constituencies won by each party is then added up and the party with the most gets to govern the country. At least that’s how I understand it.

The problem is that the constituencies are not equal in size. As such if you have one constituency of, lets say, 100,000 people and all of them vote Tory (The Conservative Party) then that equals 1 seat in Parliament. However if you have ten other constituencies all with 10,000 people in them and they all vote for the Labour Party then they get 10 seats in Parliament, even though they got exactly the same number of votes. What this means is you get situations, like during our last general election, where numerically more people voted for the runners up than voted for the party that actually won the election. Not ideal.

Because of this you can have the added issue that I am having. I live in an area that has, going back further than I have been alive, always voted Conservative. In fact we have had the same MP for the entire time I have lived in the area and I really don’t see that changing with this election. What this means is that, no matter who I personally vote for, the chances are very, very high that my constituency will be counted as Conservative, and seeing that it is only really the number of constituencies that actually count what does that say about the value of my vote?

And I can tell you I won’t be voting Conservative. Thanks to websites like Skeptical Voter and They Work For You I know that my local Conservative MP, the guy who is probably going to win again this time, voted in favour of entering the Iraq war and supported making homeopathy available on the NHS. So…yeah!

So I am left unsure how to proceed. According to Vote Matcher none of the three major parties, the parties that actually stand a chance of winning anything, stand for the things I believe in, with the Conservative party being at the very bottom of the list. The parties that fit closest which my point of view are the small ones that really stand next to no chance of winning anything. So here are my questions:

Do I vote for one of the Big Three, choosing the least evil of them of course, simply because that way the party I vote for might actually have a chance of winning?

Do I vote for one of the smaller parties that more accurately represent me even though there is little to no chance of them actually winning?

Or do I not bother voting at all given that my constituency will count as a Conservative vote no matter what I do?

Seriously I have no idea what to do. I look forward to reading your thoughts on this matter.