Active Citizenship

The constituency I live in is West Bromwich West Boro. I found this by looking on an election map from http://www.election-maps.co.uk/electmaps.jsf. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough is my local council.

From looking on http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/constituencies/west-bromwich-west I found out my Local MP is Adrian Bailey. He is from the Labour and Co-operative Party.

I believe it is important everyone votes in the election but what if a person does not believe they are informed enough to vote for anyone? If this were the case then their vote is not valid in a way. A vote is a way for people to get their voices heard. It may seem insignificant putting a cross in a box but it makes such a huge difference.

The first time I voted was last year for the local election. I was not informed enough until I did my research a few days before. The only reason I did this was because at first I was not going to vote. As stupid as it sounds, I felt I was too young to have an opinion and that politics was boring. It was only when my parents and teachers from my 6th form made a huge point of the suffragettes fighting for the women’s vote that made me think my opinion does actually count and I will have my own view and research the parties I can vote for.

In the local election the Labour party lost a considerable amount of votes and the Conservatives gained many votes. This shows how people’s votes are very important. They managed to change the net amount of councillors from each party in each council (refer to figure 1 below).

The uninformed vote also threw up some issues in the 2009 election. People voting for the ludicrous (the nicest word I could think of) BNP with a gain of +3 councillors (refer to figure 1 below).

Elections 2009: Councils A-Z (Figure 1)
IN DETAIL
Councils Councillors
Party Total Net +/- Total Net +/-
Conservative 30 +7 1531 +244
Liberal Democrat 1 -1 484 -2
Labour 0 -4 178 -291
Independents 0 0 97 +6
Green 0 0 18 +8
Residents Association 0 0 9 +2
UK Independence Party 0 0 7 +7
Mebyon Kernow 0 0 3 0
British National Party 0 0 3 +3
Liberal 0 0 2 0
Others 0 0 30 15
No Overall Control 3 -2
34 of 34 councils have officially declared

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/elections/local_council/09/html/region_99999.stm?sortresults=az