Tarah Adjei

Evaluate the effectiveness of the various ways in which participation and democracy could be strengthened in the UK

Due to the falling levels of participation over the years, democracy has become less apparent in society. People believe there are a number of ways that this can be strengthened. One way that this can be achieved is if more people vote in elections. This can be done by making voting compulsory or by creating new ways of voting, such as postal or e-voting. Although this would result in a healthier democracy, because the outcome of the elections would actually represent what the people want, there are some weaknesses to using these methods. For example, people might genuinely not know who to vote for, and so by making voting compulsory they may feel like they have been forced into doing something they actually don’t have much knowledge about. This will therefore affect the accountability of the elections. Also postal and e-voting are ways of making voting easier because some people are just lazy to vote, and so these ways may appeal to them. However people usually don’t have to go very far to vote in the first place; usually only down the road to their local primary school. And so these new ways of voting may not be as effective either. E-voting can also cause problems because people may be able to hack into the electoral voting system and alter the votes, therefore making the elections less reliable and not speak for the people, which is the point of democracy. A good way of increasing participation levels is by introducing more politics and citizen...

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