The Election Game

Hopefully, come Sunday, this week’s Federal Election result will be known, and we can all return to normal life.

Of course, given how election results have gone over recent times, that may be too much to expect. It seems that many elections now are so close that getting the final outcome can sometimes drag into the following week or even longer.

What I’m now about to say will sound totally stupid to many people, but in all honesty, I think it may be a reflection of how many people are feeling about politics and politicians at this time.

I think we’d be no worse off if we just threw the names into a hat and had a lucky draw to determine who wins.

The reason I say this is because from where I sit, it really does seem like a lottery rather than a ballot where people cast votes having made an informed decision based on the information they know or have been given. Electioneering has always been a game but the way the game is played today borders on the ridiculous. That’s certainly my opinion, I wonder how others see it?

To back that up, here’s how I see the modern election game played.

The spirit of pre-polling is meant for people who won’t be around on election day. Today, it seems it’s used by anyone who simply doesn’t want the hassle associated with voting on polling day. A simple lie will allow you to vote. Does that make sense? Why bother asking if it really doesn’t matter?

Then we have social media. We’ve all heard of the questionable things that are put on social media where candidates are smeared or ridiculed, and it’s pretty obvious that such activity can seriously affect an election result. Surely such material is not helpful for voters.

Next, we have the campaign period itself. This is a time when the pollies bombard us with promises, claims, counter claims and then throw money at seemingly everything, it almost appears as if there’s no tomorrow.

Why is the game played this way?

In this election, as with most, we’ve had heaps of time to see our pollies in action, hear what they say, see what they do or don’t do and basically get to know who they are and what are they like. Surely the “games” our pollies have played during the last 3 – 4 weeks shouldn’t change a person’s mind on what they think of them and whether they’ll vote for them? If we didn’t know them and have our mind made up a month ago, I can’t see how anything said or done in the last few weeks should change that.

Politicians bombard us day in, day out with pollie speech and as sure as night follows day, one will say black, one will say white on every subject. I for one, don’t know who to believe and therefore have little respect for the political system at large. That is not say there aren’t some very good people in politics, there are.

For me, politics has become nothing more than a game and I for one don’t care who wins, I doubt much will change other than some voters will end up better off and some will end up worse off. Next time, the winners and losers might change but nothing that really matters in the big picture will change for the better.

I’d be just as happy to see the winners drawn from a hat to save us the pain of having to play or watch the election game ever again.