I'm a week to young to vote, but I have been caught up in the politics thing a bit, and from what I have observed, I have one thing to stay.
From what I can tell, when it comes to politics, almost everybody is doing it wrong. The criteria by which they choose who to vote for are completely illogical. I'd like to go through a few things that I have observed, not just of the voters but the system itself.
-Among my peers, they're completely ignoring half of the political spectrum. They make an analysis of some the political parties (a bad analysis, but sill an analysis), but anything further right than the lib dems gets immediately classified as "facist nazism" and ignored without even their crude analysis
-They go by personal likes or dislikes of someone. I've heard so many people say "I'm not going to vote for X because he's a twat/plonker/bastard". Whether or not you like someone has nothing to do with their aptitude. In fact, I hold the belief that the biggest problem in our society is that people treat people differently based on whether or not they like them or not.
-Ignorance. Oh god, the ignorance. Given the huge number of issues that are debated, and the huge complexities of these issues, it is nearly impossible for any one person to know about the issues in enough detail to make an informed decision about all of the issues. In the political parties, there are different people who play different roles in the government, so problems can be dealt with by those who are suitable. When it comes to individual voters, the voters cannot possibly know enough ot be able to make a proper decision about the issues. This is not the problem. The problem is that people do not know this. A huge number of people know very little about the issues, think they know a lot, and make an uninformed decision.
-The debates and similar things. In a debate, the person who gives the biggest impression on the voters is going to be the one who is the most charismatic and who can think on their feet best. If the PM is doing their job properly, neither of these should matter. If someone can make good decisions about policies, charisma should not be necessary. Similarly, when the PM makes his decisions, I want him the think about the matter in detail, not come up with something off the top of his head
-The questions that are brought up. The questions place a lot of emphasis on two concepts - "right" and "fair". These are concepts that are very hard to define, can change easily, and have a very large grey area. They are also very subjective, and people's views of what is fair and right changes from person to person. I want as little emphasis placed on such imprecise terms as possible.