Voting Is Personal? Bullshit.

This isn’t a post about the Scottish referendum.

Although it kind of is.

There has been an expansive, open, and encouraging debate on the streets of Glasgow over the last few months. The national conversation has been going on for much longer, but it’s been noticeable that the city has come alive with political engagement as the referendum has drawn nearer.

There is an old attitude that puzzles me, and one that is still on show around the fringes of the discussion. It might still play a big part in the way the vote goes.

Voting is personal, some will say.

We shouldn’t be discussing it.

It’s for people to make up their own mind.

While the last line is true, the very idea that it can be done while sticking to the first two utterly boggles my mind. It’s a fundamental reason why democracy has stopped working for the people. Debate, discussion, even division and disagreement, are at the very heart of democracy. You talk. You ask. You answer. You test other people’s arguments out and -more importantly- you test your own ideas out.

Sure, the moment when you’re in the booth, the moment when you’re ticking a box, that moment is private. The box that you tick can remain personal if you’re more comfortable. But there is an idea that has been allowed to grow in the working and middle classes that conflates the privacy of the booth with an idea that none of the process is up for discussion.

Voting is one of the most public things we do. It’s at the heart of our civic process. We all come together at the same place on the same day to give our opinion on something that will affect everybody.

I changed my mind on the referendum. After living in Glasgow for nearly eight years, arguing at first for a NO, and then to abstain, I changed to a YES. The final part of that process was all about me sitting down and thinking, reading a few more books, and then writing my own arguments for and against. My argument for independence was the one that swayed me, and formed the basis of my first “coming out” post on the subject. So, yes, it ultimately came down to me sitting and making up my own mind. But that came after years of debating, years of arguing, years of some real flaming stand-up rows (because division in political debate isn’t automatically evil) and of the patient counter-points of friends and loved ones.

The notion that politics is something we do on our own, in a dark quiet room, just by sitting and thinking, is one that’s been deliberately given to us in order to stop those in power from being challenged. The very idea that someone can make a fully rounded, informed, decision on something as important as politics without testing out their opinions on someone else, without being challenged, and without encountering another point of view, is the very reason our society is broken.

So, by all means, disagree with someone. By all means, ignore them. By all means argue with them. But expect them to shut up? Expect them to not want to challenge you? Well, that is an expectation for nothing to ever improve.