How to
decide your vote in the constitutional referendum
The Sunday Nation
Nairobi,
16 May 2010
How are you going to decide which way to vote in the forthcoming Constitutional Referendum? Will you follow your gut feelings as influenced by opinion leaders (e.g. politicians, clergy, lawyers, academics etc), or do you plan to make an objective decision?
We have now reached the YES or NO stage. There is no more room for debates: you either like it or you don’t. Your reasons for or against are no longer needed. Indeed, there will be no space for explanations on the ballot!
This seemingly simple choice is very difficult to make. The problem is that there are some sections of the Proposed Constitution that you will like and others that you won’t. Therefore, you need to develop an objective and systematic method of weighing the good versus the bad in order to arrive at an overall opinion.
Here is my suggestion: BEFORE you start reading the document, prepare an evaluation table with the following column headings: Chapter Number; Level of Importance; Assessment (happy/unhappy); and Score.
Enter the chapter numbers (from Preamble to CAP 18) in the first column. Next; decide how important the issues covered by each chapter are to you. A scale of 1-to-5 will do – Level 1 meaning it is not important and 5 meaning very important. Do this allocation of importance BEFORE reading the details inside the chapters.
For example, the preamble is very important to me (don’t ask why!), therefore I will give it Level 5. On the other hand, for reasons that I will keep to myself, I truly don’t care whether we have Devolved Governments. Thus Chapter 11 gets level 1 in my table.
After doing this, you will be ready to start reading. Upon finishing each chapter, decide whether you are happy or unhappy with the way the issue has been handled. It may be quicker to simply allocate a positive mark for happy or a negative for unhappy; however, you will find that you are happier with one chapter than you are with another one (even though you are happy with both).
Therefore, it will be better to use this range of values: -3, -2, -1, +1, +2, or +3. On this scale, +3 means you are very happy with the way the issue is handled while +3 means you are very unhappy. Notice that zero is not included – fenced sitting is not allowed; you must take a stand!
Once you have finished assessing all the chapters, multiply the values in the second column (Level of Importance) by those in the third (Assessment) and enter the result in the fourth (Score). Finally; sum up all the scores. Note the scores for chapters that you are not happy with will be NEGATIVE.
If the final total is a positive quantity, then your vote should be “YES”; if it is negative, then yours is a “NO”. If you get a zero sum, then should indicate both “YES” and “NO”! That will be treated as a spoilt ballot.
*****
Now I must give regular readers an update: I was very determined to go back to my polling station and deregister as a voter to protest the extension of the registration deadline. Unfortunately, I was held-up by previously arranged commitments and therefore I couldn’t find time within the three additional days.
 |
 |