From The Liberty Wall – Total Democracy – NOTA Update
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TOTAL DEMOCRACY (TD) is a campaigning body that seeks co-operation between centralist political parties, independent groups and individuals. TD describes itself as a “co-operation of interested groups who work together on specific campaigns, you opt into the ones that match your values and ignore the ones that don’t.” It was founded by four organisations – the Democratic Reform Party, People’s Democratic Party, Popular Alliance and the National Liberal Party. In October 2013 the British Senior Citizens Party – led by Robin Macfarlane – joined TD.
Total Democracy’s first campaign is to introduce a None Of The Above (NOTA) box on our ballot papers. TD feels that the NOTA option will help to increase turnout as voters can express their disapproval until a REAL political alternative can gain traction!
At the moment, the main focus of TD is to raise awareness of NOTA. TD feels that it needs to explain how a bonafide None Of The Above option would work in practice and why it is so necessary to have one in any truly functioning democracy.
With this in mind, the NOTA campaign was discussed in some detail at a National Liberal Party meeting held towards the end of last year. Also last year a NOTA representative from a separate group appeared on national radio (Eddie Mair’s PM show on BBC Radio 4) to talk about the campaign. Despite only being alotted a couple of minutes, the main points of the campaign were broadcast to a large audience.
As we understand it, this was the most high profile mention of NOTA in the mainstream media to date at that time. Since then, however, Newsnight anchor Jeremy Paxman, has announced his support for a bonafide NOTA option on BBC One’s primetime show The One Show.
It’s probably fair to say that the concept of NOTA is now much more on the radar of the general public and the mainstream media that it was a few months ago. This is a huge achievement, not just for the NOTA campaign itself, but for all those campaigning for a more democratic system of government.
To find out more about Total Democracy, click here: https://www.facebook.com/TotalDemocracyUK?fref=ts
Date: February 12, 2014
Categories: Articles, Party News