I can't see myself ever ceasing to vote if I can help it. My opinion is: If you can't be arssed to go and cast a vote during an election, you have no right to criticize those in power. I mean, if you live in a democracy, the right to say whatever you want is given to you by default, but if I know you haven't voted, I'm probably not going to take you very seriously.
To those who put forward the argument that "my vote doesn't matter because I'm just one among millions." Please stop. If everyone thinks that way, democracy won't function. I'm not saying that it works particularly well at the moment, but it's better than living under a sadistic despot whose had his mind warped by a pampered upbringing and understands nothing of the world. Call me naive, but partisan politics sounds kind of stupid anyway. As a member of a certain party, you always have to stay within the party line and never cross it. I'd say this got out of control in the US. There, if you vote democrat you're a tree hugging godless vegan hippy liberal communist, and if you happen to vote republican, you're a racist sexist homophobic meat eating conservative capitalist.

I don’t think the Democratic Party in the United States is very left wing either. People just think it is. So the American political spectrum is much more narrow than one would be led to believe. And so I Honestly wonder if people even know what sort of ideologies are on the left here, and what those ideologies actually stand for. Because the left is not the Democratic Party at least in my opinion.

Can confirm: Trump is pretty far right. Biden and co. are...sort of a bit left of center.
I'm not just a democrat. I'm a leftist. And if I had any power to take Trump down, I'd do it. The guy's trying to say now that his first term doesn't count for some reason and is trying to rally around getting an unheard-of third term. Getting the cart ahead of the horse a bit. I dunno. When he got elected I was pretty upset but thought "okay, maybe he'll do something worthwhile". But nope.

Canada has more than two parties, but it's a first-past-the-post system. It's broken. We need electoral reform because right now everyone is generally convinced that we need either a liberal or a conservative government, when historically both keep paddling around in the same mess and driving the country further into debt and generally making life miserable except for corporations and the rich.

To be clear, I don't hate Trump and the right because I'm a leftist. If someone from that political quadrant made a good point, I'd listen. It's just that it happens so, so rarely. Likewise, when people with whom I'm generally affiliated do stupid shit, I call them on it. There is a lot of blind following happening in American politics, and hell, even in Canadian politics, but I'm not a part of it.

So it turns out you don't actually have to vote, I just looked it up: https://www.bromley.gov.uk/info/200033/ … /5awesome! If I don't feel iether side is going to achieve the things I would like them to; I don't have to worry about fines.

I'd like to speak up for the non-voters:

I don't vote now, and can't see why I would ever start. Firstly, I have no idea about politics, and have no wish to learn. That said, I never complain about the political parties, in power or out. Like I say, I don't know anything about them, and I don't care.

I did however vote on the net neutrality stuff (possibly in error as I've since discovered), and I'll vote on things I do care about. Most people (presumably people who know enough about the working of a country to vote and argue with utter confidence and conviction), don't know what sort of internet they use every day. They don't care, so they don't do anything about it. Why shouldn't I have the same right about who's running the country I was born into?

Honestly, my only problem with "foreigners coming into this country" is that more of them haven't opened shops selling stuff from back home. I love foreign food! English fish and chips or Sunday roasts are comparatively boring.

In addition, the only news I read is technological, medical, scientific, or culinary in nature, to the point where I was actually a bit surprised when I found out who our Prime Minister was a few months ago.

I love the NHS too, not that I use it hardly ever. I love England, its seasons, its contradictions, it's people. It's doing a pretty good job of staying awesome without my help, so I'll let it pootle along. If it ever stops being the country I love, maybe I'll step in, and single-handedly change the course of the future by orating in the local pub.

I get a lot of flack for this: Some people who don't know me - and many who do - tell me everything from I'm stupid to not vote, I'm selfish for giving up my democratic right, and I'm ungrateful, because people have died in wars to give me the right to vote.

Also, while we're on the subject of freedom... Could someone remind me what that is please? Try making coughing jokes on a train these days. Try joking about the contents of your backpack in a crowded place. People say this stuff isn't funny, but isn't that the point of free speech? You get to say whatever you like, tasteful or otherwise. Other people get the right to disagree, as long as they're not violent, or unless you're a vegan, because who cares about those idiots?

One of the lads on the cricket team I play for calls us all "niggers" and "pakis". he tells me he's perfectly happy being a paki - he is from Pakistan after all - and thinks that it's a perfectly acceptable abbreviation, in the say way chocky is a perfectly acceptable abbreviation for "chocolate". If I tried that, reckon people would nod their heads in respect to me for exercising my right to free speech?

I made an anti welsh joke the other day, to a welsh friend. It latently occurred to both of us that it was technically racist. Neither of us minded. Free speech is conditional. Freedom is the same. Ask anyone who's ever been voluntarily sectioned.

In short, be as pissed as you like with people who don't vote, but please don't tell me you've never done something contradictory in your life. We humans are full of them.

We eat dead animals while defending our pets. We complain about beaches clogged with rubbish while eating from non-recyclable containers. We complain about people coming to our country who don't speak our language, then we go on holiday and use hand signals, or get pissed when we're not understood. The orgasm gap between men and women is staggering. We advertise drinking alcoholic drinks at every social occasion, yet frown on those who skin up a joint. Men say that gay people are disgusting, but love to watch lesbian porn. Women say they hate being objectified, but won't learn to play the guitar because they'll have to cut their nails and lose all that lovely soft skin the media tells them is so necessary to be fully appreciated in this social media dominated world. How many of us love going on holiday? How many of us want to live under a flight path?

@chrisnorman7, yeah, I doubt i'll be voting in the future.

You bring up an interesting point about free speach, one mans curse word is another mans, meh, while i'd not going around calling black people nigger or anything like that, I think if it's amongst people you know and who won't beat the ever living crap out of you for it, why not?

Here's another one for ya, isn't it funny how offended people get on blind peoples behalf, and then when we telll them we don't need their help because of that thing, they get offended, it's like they want us to thank them for being the great saver of the blind or something, it's strange.

As for those who died in wars and all that for us to vote, I didn't ask them to go to war for me, so that's that argument done.