M is for… Minister of Magic

Fudge, Scrimgeour, Thicknesse, Shacklebolt. Who would you vote for?

The Minister of Magic in the Harry Potter universe is democratically selected and voted on by the public, although the process isn’t really explored all that much in the books. What is explored is corruption within politics, but we are left at the end of the books with a turn around – Kingsley Shaklebolt shaking things up for the better.

Hopefully it hasn’t escaped your notice that a general election is happening in the UK on 7th May 2015. Is it time for a shake up in the Muggle World too?

In 2012 the Harry Potter Alliance in the states aimed to encourage people to use their vote,  and we’d like to do the same here in the UK.
There are many reasons to vote, and I was reminded of this when spotting the first trailer for the film Suffragette yesterday. Voting is a right people have fought for. Women, minorities, people under dictatorships. But voting engagement in the UK – where we have that right automatically has fallen. Figures showed 83.9% voted in 1950, 59.4% in 2001 and 65.11% in 2011  Can we make this year’s even higher.

Interestingly this website doesn’t include deliberate spoiling of voting papers in voter turnout – however personally I think it is preferable to turn up and spoil a paper rather than stay at home. I still believe we should have a none of the above option.

What I’m asking you to do is to explore the issues, there are a number of ‘which party should I choose’ quizzes that summarise the main parties policies and you can see which party best represents your views. Now, there isn’t going to be one party that you agree with 100%, but I think the view I’m going to take is, if my right to vote was taken away who would I have wanted to vote for. For once I’m going to put aside the notion that it has to be between one of the two bigger parties and really vote to affect the change I want to see. Our votes do matter. So who do you want to be your Minister? Apparate to your local booth, that will be open from 7am to 10pm, and let’s make UK voting magic happen.

How do you make a decision on who to vote for? Any handy links that help you make sense of the policies?