Conscience Vote
I don’t understand the reasoning and thoughts behind the conscience vote. I know what it means. It means that when Gay Marriage comes to a vote in Parliament, Labor MPs have been given the choice to vote how they feel. Independent of the Party’s opinion on the matter.
What I don’t understand is why it should be how they feel. MPs represent the people in their electorate. Their vote is meant to represent what the people in their electorate want. So technically, for a conscience vote to mean anything every MP should have to poll their electorate on the matter and then go from there. Or alternatively, just have a referendum because in the end that would be the same.
Conscience votes just give MPs a chance to speak their mind. Not to speak the mind of the people that they are meant to be representing. I would be shattered to think that the MP that supports my electorate would vote with what they thought, even if it went against what the majority of my electorate did.
I’m all for democracy. I’m all for electing people to make decisions about the country. But allowing a conscience vote is basically allowing a small group of people not so different from you and me to decide what is best for the country according to their own beliefs.
That’s wrong.
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warren-is-all-in-your-head reblogged this from open-yourminds and added:
No Sam, all of representative democracy is like this. You vote for someone because what they say
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open-yourminds posted this
