Re: Rand Paul
I do make the assertion that the current system is rigged, and I don't defend the 'none of the above' option - I explain why it SHOULD be an option. Defence implies there is anything wrong with it. Giving more choice to the electorate can never be a wrong thing, thus it requires no defence. In response to your assertion that the 'none of the above' option will leave the people in power in power, I fail to see why. We have an apparatus already in place that exists to perform the will of the elected people. If no-one is voted in this apparatus is capable of keeping things running, under the policies of the last people put into power, without the whole country collapsing. The UK government (ie party-in-power) is only really required to make policy changes, not actually run the day-to-day. That is the job of the civil service.
You say if people stop voting nothing changes - but the problem is that even when people do vote, nothing changes. This is because we are stuck in a system which does not force balance in political situations. In any electoral situation, all candidates should be given equal media space and time. Remove the economical power of the elite few and you will start to get true representation - and all the chaos that it will provide.
UKIP aren't making anywhere near the ground that radio stations like LBC (the Daily Mail of the airwaves) would have you believe.
It is a disgusting misrepresentation, and typical of people locked in their thinking, to declare people who don't vote as 'those who cant be bothered'. There are a vast number of people who don't vote, not because they can't be bothered, but because they aren't represented by any of the parties - and as I tried to get across in my first post - they have no idea how to get represented, because the system is deliberately difficult and confusing, expensive and elitist.
Personally, I think that people *are* stupid. Not because of the way they vote, but because of the actual reasons they vote the way they do. Too many people live within one or two Sun newspaper stories around election times, and it's sad.
There are two ways I could see of going about things properly. One would be to make it a legal requirement that anyone on the electoral roll vote in elections. This would then force people to actually take some sort of note of who they're voting for....eventually. It would take a couple of decades for people to learn about the realities of their choices, but at least they would, hopefully, eventually learn.
The other is to either allow people to vote for policies rather than parties, or candidates to roles instead of overall parties and whomsoever they present for jobs after elected. The first gives more power to the people but would cause absolute collapse as everyone voted which ever way Simon Cowell wanted. The second seems more viable. If you are presented with two sets of credentials and policies for the position of Chancellor, would you vote for the Conservative with a degree in The History of Art who was a director of the BBC for three years, or the Lib-Dem with the degree in Economics who was Finance Director for GlaxoSmithKline for three years? I use those made up examples for illustration only. Of course, this method of election would require people to have attention spans longer than minnows, and so would probably not succeed.
Oh, and just to shoot down your dumbass theory about whether people would be complaining as I am, and carefully trying to misrepresent how I think in the process. I'm actually relatively happy with the current elected setup. Given the system that we currently have, I think we ended up in the best of a really shitty situation.