Transcriber: Ellen Maloney Reviewer: Mile Živković
Hello, I'm going to talk to you about a problem,
then I'm going to give you not one, not two,
but five solutions,
including this guy, and this thing
But first, on the evening of the local and European elections this year,
something huge was happening and my fiance tweeted about it.
[My sister won't vote because Harry Potter is on TV.]
Yes, that's right.
7:35pm, ITV, a repeat of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2."
Which is the best part.
This tweet got a few re-tweets and favorites because, on the one hand,
it's funny; the Harry Potter films are pretty good.
Voting, by comparison, does seem quite dull.
But on the other hand, it's not at all funny
because Beth is a fairly typical 18-year-old,
and like so many of her peers in the UK, she didn't vote.
Until 1992, over 60% of 18 - 24-year-olds
were voting in general elections.
By 2010, that had dropped to 44%.
Latest polling suggests that only 24%, less than one in four,
are certain to vote at the next general election.
And that means that we're in trouble.
Democracy is a system of government, by the whole population,
typically through elected representatives.
But if the majority of young people aren't voting for these representatives,
then how can they possibly be represented by them?
Presumably many of these young people will grow up to have children
who are markedly less likely to vote if their parents don't,
and so overall turnout will decrease to an absurdly low level,
where democracy is, in all honesty, a sham.
Worse still, politicians aren't going to do anything about it.
This is a bit more contentious.
Am I really claiming that politicians don't want
something that's essential to our democracy?
Yes I am; I think they are happy with things as they are.
Why?
Because politicians, fundamentally, chase votes.
The young are expected not to vote, so no one is chasing them.
The government looks after the people that have elected it: old people.
We're kind of living, you could argue, in a gerontocracy,
where the youngest get hit the hardest.
From broken promises on tuition fees,
to plans to cut out-of-work benefits for under-25s,
to scrapping of the education maintenance allowance,
the list goes on and on and on.
But what politicians would do well to remember is this:
lying largely dormant, within those young people,
is an enormous amount of power.
An amount of power that should terrify Westminster.
Let's do a quick, easy sum:
Let's assume that all of the estimated five million
18 - 24-year-old voters in the UK
had registered and voted in the 2010 general election.
And also, that they had all voted for the same party.
We know there was no overall majority at that election.
So if they had all voted Tory,
then you would put the new numbers into a swingometer,
and you get this result: an overall majority,
for the Conservatives, of 248 seats.
You do the same for Labour.
They all vote for Labour, and you get an overall majority
for Labour of 90 seats.
Just think about that for a moment.
If they all voted Tory, we would now have a Tory government.
If they all voted Labour, we would now have a Labour government.
That is the latent power right there.
I find myself in quite an interesting position
because I have no background in politics.
I've never been a member of a political party.
But what I have done is spent the best part of ten years
presenting TV shows for young people.
I get stopped on the streets by kids who want to chat or whatever.
65% of my Twitter following is under 25s,
and I'd go so far as to say I have
quite a good relationship with young people.
And as such, I would like to quickly dispel a myth about them.
Young people not voting is not due
to them being uncaring, or apathetic, or lazy,
as the media and certain MPs might have you believe.
On the contrary, in my experience, they do care.
They're passionate about social action,
they're volunteering in greater numbers than ever before, they campaign online.
They've just lost faith, or never had faith,
in the top-down political process.
They don't believe that the main political leaders
understand the issues that affect them most.
They feel like they're the last group that politicians want to talk to,
and they're probably right.
Nevertheless, voting remains the primary way
that people can make their voices heard, so this has to be tackled right now.
Here's how; I think all of these things should be implemented simultaneously.
Solution one: Voting should be online.
No question, okay?
It's crazy that in 2015, we're expecting young people to go and queue up
to tick a box on a bit of paper, behind a curtain in a village hall.
They're digital natives.
We've got to take voting to where they are,
to where we'll all be in a few years time anyway.
As it is, 78% of the UK population use the internet at least twice a week,
so the majority of us are already there.
I commissioned a survey of 18 - 35 year old Twitter users
and of those that said they are currently unlikely to vote,
75% said they would vote if voting was online.
75%.
One of the worries often raised about online voting
is it's susceptible to fraud.
Really?
You're happy to bank online but not to vote online.
Come on, it's got to be easy to make online voting secure.
Certainly more secure than postal voting currently is.
My next solution is quite strong, but then it's desperate times, isn't it?
Beth is going to have to pause Harry Potter for a moment,
or I'll fine her.
Not a huge amount; in Australia the fine is about 20 dollars, which is 12 pounds.
Just enough to act as a disincentive
to the 3.3 million first-time voters in the UK.
This is about forming the voting habit early,
making it a part of people's lives that they just don't question.
I hear a lot of cries in discussions about this of "that's undemocratic!"
No, it isn't.
Undemocratic is people not voting.
This, at worst, could be described as "illiberal."
But there are loads of things that we accept, that are mandatory,
because they are deemed to be the right thing to do.
Jury service, paying taxes, or having a passport are all good examples.
We would need to have a conscientious opt-out for the Russell Brands among us,
but I would ensure that the opt-out process
was much more of a ball-ache than voting itself.
(Laughter)
It is also clear that it is not okay to make people vote
for one of the available parties if none of the available parties
sufficiently represent their views.
Solution three: the introduction of this.
[None of the above]
Currently, the equivalent of a "none of the above" vote is not voting.
The big distinction between the two is that not voting gets ignored,
whereas a "none of the above" vote has to be counted
and has to be taken notice of.
Imagine this for a moment; "none of the above" wins some seats.
No, "none of the above" wins a load of seats.
"None of the above" wins an overall majority and we have an empty parliament,
just empty seats.
It's glib, but also, wouldn't that be the ultimate expression
of dissatisfaction from the electorate?
Also, it would have to be heeded.
So I would call a second election and then in the six months of treading water,
the parties would be scrambling for your votes,
they would be desperate, falling over themselves to win back your support.
And surely, that is no bad thing.
Going back to compulsory voting.
A very worryingly common concern about it
is that you'd end up with ill-informed voters,
voters who are voting but don't know what they're voting for,
or who they're voting for,
but they're voting because they don't want to pay a fine.
That's quite poisonous thinking,
because who's to say when someone is well-informed enough?
Is it you? Is it me?
And who would we end up excluding?
For comparison's sake, in Louisiana in the early 60s, many would-be-voters
were forced to take a trick pseudo-intelligence test,
that was dressed up as a literacy test.
Those tests were used, not explicitly, but undeniably,
to exclude black people, and occasionally the very poorest white people,
from voting.
I don't know about you, but I'm not up for that sort of thing.
Everyone gets to vote, all votes are equal.
That is that.
I went into a school in West London to talk to year 13 pupils
about compulsory voting
and one of them said,
"Fine, if I have to, I might as well go and find out something about it."
I said, "Yes, that's right."
But where?
Where can he find that information?
Time and time again I hear from young people they don't vote
because they can't differentiate between the major political parties,
and they don't know enough about what's going on politically.
Is that any surprise?
Have a look at these three manifesto statements from the last general election.
Those are three separate parties, just meaningless, identical platitudes.
Then in the media, you have this overwhelmingly vast,
fast-moving stream of evolving information.
And what people need, actually, is just a place to start.
That is where these come in.
Voter advice applications, VAAs, provide an entry point.
Essentially you go online and you answer a series of questions
by ticking a number of options,
then at the end, the app matches you
with a party that you have most in common with.
VAAs demand much-needed clarity from the parties too,
because when designers consult with the parties
to ascertain their positions on every question,
the parties can't be vague or blather on about fairness.
They have to stick to a position, a concrete position.
The really frustrating thing I find about VAAs
is they're not even new.
They're big in Europe, they're big in Germany and Holland
where they are integrated into the media.
40% of the Dutch electorate used the StemWijzer
before the 2012 national election.
40% of them.
Then in Germany, 70% of Wahl-o-Mat users compare their results
with friends, colleagues, and families.
Which just goes to show, it's a spreadable idea,
perfectly suited to a young population
so used to connecting with one another over social networks.
We need a VAA now.
We need it in schools, and we need it in tandem with more political
and citizenship education from an early age.
Now I'll move on to my final solution.
What is a Jogee? [We need more Jogees.]
Adam Jogee is 22, and he's just been elected
as a councillor in Haringey in North London.
It's clearly nonsense to suggest
that you can only be represented by people exactly like you,
but it does help if you see some people in power who are a bit like you.
I went to meet Adam to ask him if he thought he'd gained votes
from young people because of his age.
He said, "Categorically yes."
He knew of many young voters who'd voted for him because they knew him,
or they knew of him, or they'd recognised him.
Not recognised him in the sense that they knew him personally,
but they recognised him as one of them;
someone they could talk to, someone they could relate to.
In other words, a real rarity.
The pupils in the school I went to said this about politicians:
"They're old guys, it would help if they were closer to our age."
"They don't speak my language."
Jermain Jackman, the 18 year old winner of The Voice this year,
and former Hackney Youth Parliament representative agreed, saying,
"All this gobbledygook; what's going on?"
He also totally understood how vital a role someone like him can play
in bridging that gap between young people and Westminster.
It's not just 17 and 18 year olds who feel that distance.
Half of the 18 - 35-year-old Twitter users said they'd be more likely
to vote for someone closer to their own age.
We need more Adam Jogees and if more young people vote,
inevitably, I think more Adam Jogees will emerge.
Those are my five solutions.
One last thing:
If any politicians have watched this and thought, "That's really unfair.
I care about young people, I want them to vote."
That's great.
Prove me wrong, make these things happen.
Because next May, when I look at my fiance's sister's timeline,
these are the kind of tweets that I want to read:
[Just did the #VAA guys, ready to vote! #myvotecounts
#voted #nofineforme #myvotecounts #harrywho ]
Thank you.
(Applause)