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Originally Posted by Ultimate Newbie
(it doesnt seem to make sense to take the time to voluntarily vote only to waste your time donkey voting, though it does apparently happen)
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I am such a voter, though generally to appease the guilt I'd feel for not even turning up.
Plus it's only once every couple years.
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Originally Posted by Hebdomad
But it's still important because voters gain a greater understanding of what their government is doing, normally through an intermediary such as a newspaper/internet site, which in turn can improve government (corruption etc).
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The only people who are set to gain a better understanding are those that are already interested in the process, and therefore probably know what's going on (to an extent that they're content with) anyway. C-SPAN is an excellent channel if you give a crap about the machinations of American politics, though if you're not interested in it merely the presence of the information won't be enough to persuade you to go an examine it.
It's not like there's a great deal of opacity about UK politics, most of it's there and available if you really want it. It's just mostly very dull, and complicated, and would require more time than the average person could reasonably devote to it to stay on top of things in their entirety. There's only so much of such a large organisation of people that someone on the outside can be expected to keep in step with and understand to the point where they can make reasonable judgements about what's going on. That's not to say that people shouldn't try, but simply increasing the transparency of the process (and inundating everyone outside of it with information they will probably never use) is almost certainly not going to make a difference.