Prisoners, are regarded to be menaces to society, they commit crimes and millions is spent on them every year from the taxpayer’s own pocket. As the present law stands, any man or woman that has spent more than a year in jail may not vote. However, going to jail does not necessarily mean that prisoners are incapable of deciding who should be in government next, for in many circumstances, people come out of prison with an education. After all, it is the government’s responsibility to look after prisoners just the same as they must look after the ‘free’. Even though losing your vote is seen as a deterrent, crimes still occur and losing the vote does not matter to this part of society. However, the underlying fact is that being in prison does not mean that prisoners are incapable of voting.
As perhaps, the most influential and less predictable part of society, the young often have the deciding vote in any election. However this can often be a burden to this section of society, especially when limited numbers vote. Eighteen year olds can be very easily influenced, and as statistics have shown they generally vote for the wrong reasons. However, I do not think that the law should change. In fact, 18 year olds are far less rigid in their voting than their elders and many know more about British Politics than their parents.
According to the electoral register to vote, you must have a permanent address of residence. Therefore under the present laws the homeless and travellers are ineligible to vote. In some respects, this means that they are disenfranchised but might be wish to be politically active. The voting process is therefore marred as it naturally becomes less democratic without the vote of this part of society.
To stand a chance of being elected to Parliament today it is necessary to be nominated as a candidate for your local constituency. To be nominated you must first satisfy the following requirements. A candidate must be over the age of 21 years and must be a citizen of Britain, the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Certain persons are ineligible to run for candidacy. These include persons currently bankrupt, those having spent more than a year in prison, members of the clergy of the Church of England, Ireland, Scotland, or the Roman Catholic Church, members of the House of Lords (including the Judiciary), civil servants and members of local services such as the Army, the Police Force or Local Government offices.
Naturally, there are many ways in which the nomination process itself is not perfect. Candidates are nominated according to requirements such as age and citizenship. However, these requirements may not necessarily involve what is required to be a local MP in parliament. Many candidates may therefore be nominated with very few qualifications needed to run a local Government thus making it potentially inefficient and badly organised. The requirements to also state that members of the clergy of the Church of England, Ireland, Scotland, or the Roman Catholic Church may not run for candidacy. However this is perhaps ignoring the vital skills that vicars have. For example if a local Church of England vicar was also the local MP he would not only know the people in his constituency, but he would know their needs and more importantly their wants. This of course would not be possible for all members of the clergy; Bishops for example are already in the House of Lords and so could not possibly manage their responsibilities. Even so, it would still be potentially viable for local vicars to become MPs as they could do everything that their constituency required.
In these ways many problems arise in the voting and candidate selection system, but these are purely political - arising in problems of ‘unfairness’ - causing the system to become petty and merely ‘victories between parties’. It is in this way that the parties of today are more focused on winning votes than they are on running parliament efficiently and democratically.
