this morning’s google doodle! (i love them not only for the flag-coloured poll box, which they do for every country, but because they remembered the four-language voting sign.)
it’s polling day, and i’m still home in my jammies at 2pm. oh, i’ll go, in the late afternoon, when there is no queue and the election officers are getting bored. (the father, shaking his head on seeing me: “我们已经去vote了！”， the use of mandarin, already somewhat incongruous for him, and the mid-sentence switch back into english because he couldn’t think of the word “投票“, giving me startled pause.) the polling station is 200m down the road, a stroll and back, most years i would have just gone out and checked an item off my to-do list, precisely because it is so convenient, and voting in singapore is no hassle anyway, the whole thing is beautifully managed (logistics is one of the civil service’s strong suit, i’ll give them that ungrudgingly.) but i feel a lot more apathetic about this election than any of the others that have gone before, in part because of where i live, the result for my ward is foregone, has been for 25 years (this is the very heart of the party), it isn’t changing because of me, but i suspect i’m dwadling, in part because i have great ambivalence about both candidates this year (in previous years my choice was very clear.) and yet would hate to spoil my vote, and am putting off having to do something about it until i must (i am also the kind of person who wavers over the menu right up till the point the waiter takes my order, so you see.)
but this is also precisely what i do like about countries with compulsory voting, like us, and australia. whether or not you’ve educated yourself about the issues, whether or not you support this party or that candidate, you still make yourself go to the polling station, and you do your best to make some decisions that need making, there’s no hiding from it at home and saying nevermind, someone else can decide. and if you can’t or are not willing to make those decisions, you cast a spoilt vote, and that is fine, but you must still show up at the ballot box to personally and formally abjure this decision by casting that spoilt vote. the difference is not one of numbers, but of psychology.
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird