Three stories about voting
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-11-19 12:17:59
Some letters to the editor printed in this week's Southern Weekly:
Will you vote?by Liu Bao. Changzhou. Jiangsu Province
It's once again election time for People's Congress representatives in my area and in the neighborhoods and offices you can see candidates' lists posted. But truth be told not a single one of the voters I know including myself cares about the notices.
At age eighteen we are given the right to vote. Voting is too easy for us—isn't it just drawing a circle on a piece of paper? How to find out about the candidates and how to pick a qualified representative is something of a mystery to the average voter. The easiest thing is to simply draw a circle below a name that you may or may not have heard of.
One of my teachers said he attended a civics class more than sixty years ago that discussed how to organize an election and how to cast a ballot so from an early age they understood the technology behind an election. I never attended such a class; though I have a ballot in my hand will I vote? This is indeed a problem.
Why can't grandma and grandpa vote?yfcheng. Junan. Shandong Province
The election for our village committee was very disappointing. The cadres went from house to house with ballots to let the villagers vote in front of them. Some elderly people including my grandparents had no opportunity to vote because the cadres never went to their houses.
My grandparents are not yet sixty and their minds are still clear—why can't they vote? My grandmother angrily told me about this so from the county high-school where I am studying. I gave a phone call to a newspaper in the provincial capital. They said that they could not report on such a sensitive issue. I am saddened that the media cannot exercise effective oversight and I am troubled by the current state of grass-roots democratic politics.
Casting ballots is not just a formality for citizensYan Jingjing. Hong Kong
On 18 November ballots will be cast in the Hong Kong district council elections. Today (29 October). I received a voting notification about the elections that contained four items in total. The first was a description of voting procedure telling me where and when I should cast my ballot what documentation I should bring and the process of voting. On the back was a detailed map. The second item had brief introductions of the candidates: photos of the three candidates in my district personal information and a brief statement of their platform. The third item was a long thin card the official "ballot notification." The fourth item was a "voter information" notification issued by the Independent Commission Against Corruption warning against engaging in any sort of voter malpractice and providing a detailed description of voting methods.
I remember that when I went to study in Beijing. I encountered an election for People's Congress representatives. The class cadre gave us a verbal notification that on such and such a day and at a certain classroom building we would take part; we cast our ballots in utter confusion. At the time I felt that I was nothing more than a ballot-casting tool. I only saw the list of candidates after I arrived at the polling place. There were three of them and we were to choose any two. From start to finish I never saw any description of their platform. Aside from their names departments and positions. I knew nothing about them. In addition because the household registration of every mainland student is transferred to their school during their time at university they had a rule that every student must vote. As a result even a student like me with Hong Kong documentation and no household registration was forced to cast a ballot.
Today looking at the four items in my hands my first reaction is that I am being treated as a "citizen." Casting a ballot a democratic process set down in the law not merely a formality to show off democracy. If you provide insufficient information before the ballot is cast if you do not give the electorate the respect they deserve if you only shove a ballot into their hands and then command from on high. "Go. Vote!"—is this a case of not taking the voters seriously or of not taking elections seriously?
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: Geremie Barme addresses Wang Shuo's 千万别把我当人.
: This memoir piece is by Xujun Eberlein author of the new short story book Apologies Forthcoming'.
+ (2006.09): Lou Ye gets banned from filmmaking and workers in a Beijing film processing plant confiscate copies of a movie they think is too sexy.
+ (2007.01): Zhang Rui writes about a Beijing plan to ban seniors from the city's streets with the goal of reducing gridlock among pedestrians.
+ (2007.07): Lin Shaohua (林少华) talks about how his translations of the works of Haruki Murakami (村上春树) are received in China.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://www.danwei.org/law/three_stories_about_voting.php
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