Thread: Giving Afghans (and More) a Vote in Britain's Election

Giving Afghans (and More) a Vote in Britain's Election

By Stephan Faris Sunday, Mar. 14, 2010





An Afghan woman in Kabul votes during her country's presidential election on August 20, 2009.

In late April, if all goes according to plan, a resident of Kabul will fold up a paper ballot and push in into an empty box. It will mark the first time an Afghan citizen will have voted — for a candidate in the United Kingdom.
That's the idea behind an initiative called Give Your Vote, in which U.K. citizens will voluntarily give up their votes in the parliamentary elections expected to take place May 6 to residents in the developing world. The aim is less to tip the British elections one way or the other than to highlight the limitations of local decision-making in an increasingly interconnected world. "Right now, the people making decisions on things like climate change aren't getting their authority from the guy in Bangladesh whose house is being flooded," says James Sadri, one of the founders of Egality, the British activist group behind the project. "But what if the politicians did have to answer to these people? Would it change their position on climate change, poverty and war?" (See pictures of the presidential election in Afghanistan.)
Here's how the program, which launches on March 15, will work: British volunteers will pose questions from people in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Ghana to U.K. parliamentary candidates at town hall meetings or through party offices, and the answers will then be discussed on television and radio in each of the three countries. A week before the U.K. vote, Egality will hold an American Idol-style election in the countries, in which people will cast votes for their preferred U.K. party — Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat. The following week, British citizens who decide to participate in the program — organizers are hoping for a few thousand — will receive a text message from Egality telling them how to cast their ballot. The votes will be doled out based on the proportion each party received in the overseas elections.



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