AIBU: The Green Party

I spoiled my paper today...Can't vote with any conscience for any of them. Not one candidate even knocked at my door to canvass; in fact I had election material literally thrown at my doorstep from the pavement.

I was told that there was some way to have your lack of vote recorded - not just as a spoiled ballot? Can't seem to find out what that may be?

I understand your logic. But I live in a conservative stronghold for local government (read only 1 opposition member) and part of democracy is having an opposition to offer some scrutiny and try and hold the majority party to account.

If I spoil my ballot I will still live in a local authority area with only one party - where is the scrutiny and opposition.

I feel so strongly about this that I have voted for people I don't agree with knowing that they can't actually form a majority anyway as they don't have enough candidates in enough areas but they may at least question some of the decision making of the conservatives.

Even my mum is spoiling her ballot.

I spoilt my ballot and then had a very heated argument with one of the labour candidates (male) who told me that women shouldn't be entitled to sex segregated spaces and it was appalling and illiberal to object to self ID and undermine people's gender identity. He started arguing about why on earth I would need to be in a women's only ward etc. Apparently Karen White was irrelevant. I think I called him another twatty lefty misogynist and then his wife started on me. Oh and they are parents at my kids school too so that will be fun! Interesting my partner says when he told the same guy he objected to self ID a few weeks ago he just nodded along quietly, so he's going to be asking him why the different response to a woman. That's me done with labour anyway.

Please, please, please and a million more pleas do not vote UKIP. I understand why
none of the parties are desirable (I also don't know who I'll vote for in the general election over this) but UKIP are a horrible, thuggish racist party.

Agree, I will spoil my ballot. I don't think the greens are the way to address climate change. They are too overrun with TRAs and tied up in knots about stupid stuff.

To address climate change we need governments to actually do stuff - massive subsidies on electric cars, massive investment in research, massive penalties for not recycling / using too much plastic. Huge investment in public transport (and re-nationalise). I've often wondered if actually a communist government would be better for the environment than the greens simply because they'd be willing to do things like renationalise the railways.

Other countries do practical things better than us, in Switzerland in most of the communes the normal bin bags for general waste (which you have to use by law) cost about 20 quid for a roll of 10. So that's a big incentive to recycle as much as possible, and they doubled their recycling figures by doing that. Government could easily do that here - yes, people would complain at first but they'd get on with it after that. They just don't want to - don't know why, plastic / petrochemical lobbyist money propping too many of them up?

I spoiled my ballot, just couldn't bring myself to vote for any of them. There's plenty of people who don't vote because they can't be bothered or simply don't care. I'm not one of those people, so I felt it was important to go, but at the same time, I'm not putting a cross in a box for anyone who isn't going to stand up for what's important.

Yes, small numbers. But there's no substantial difference between that and voting for a small party or candidate unlikely to succeed. We all make our choices hopefully through much consideration, and, it being politics there are any number of opinions on the matter.

I can't think of a party that does not have a deal breaking element for me right now. I know that voting is often about compromise. But sometimes that just isn't possible - were I American I would have voted neither Trump or Clinton.

Most votes are pretty impotent in our set up, sadly, which is why turn out is so low so often. But if there are spoiled ballots, from people who obviously were not apathetic and went to the polling station, that's one way of trying to get a voice heard.

OP is the independent in your area no good? There's a big movement in my area to have an independent "borough first!" non-party political party which seems like a good idea.

Crossed post - yes in cases of small numbers I can see it would make local politicians listen. But that's still in small numbers!

I read the 'vote none' link above - so the spoiled votes get counted, might be on the news if they're huge, but meanwhile everything continues as usual and the person with most votes wins... Unless there's enough momentum of spoiled votes that the political process changes significantly... Is that the hoped-for outcome?
The system is patently inadequate and you're never going to find a party that represents exactly what you think about everything. But to me it feels like an option for people that don't want to make a difficult decision but want to feel like they've 'done something'. I don't know... I'm just musing out loud really and can totally understand the frustration when really important issues come into conflict.

pope it means election officials and party members at the count will see the spolit papers (if only briefly) and collectively they will need to be agreed by candidates if ambiguous. Where there are a large number of spoilt papers it may give candidates pause for thought.

In local elections winning or losing can boil down to a handful of votes. If you lose by 20 votes and there are 25 spoilt ballot papers it may make candidates reflect that someone would take the time to go into a polling station and yet not find anyone they can bring themselves to vote for. Better chance of that than simply staying at home anyway.

To me, spoiling my ballot is a legitimate form of protest that still engages with the process. I couldn't not go to the polls, I would genuinely feel guilty about disrespecting the people who paid for my freedom to do so. But I can't, in good conscience, but my cross beside any of the political parties standing.

As it happens, I have signed the legally required forms to allow a candidate to stand in my area, and I am quite happy to have done so because a multiplicity of options is a good thing in a democracy. That's different to what I do with my own vote.

Patrick Jarvis = awful.

When did he ask me whether I wanted Scottish independence?

I've read their manifesto and panicked a bit when I saw a heading "Just Transition" but it's about transitioning to renewable energy

Non-goady question to ppl spoiling their ballots: what specifically do you think it will achieve? I've been tempted to in the past but hate to be without a voice.

DpWm Yes!!

I've never spoilt a paper or protest voted before, but make a point of always voting for the least worst option as i am grateful to have a vote at all.

I will feel quite the rebel on May23rd. Perhaps I will also wear my AHF hoodie to the polling station!

Greens weren't v 'science and logic' a few years ago. I always avoided voting Green when they were pro-woo (homeopathy etc). They've gone quiet on that front afaict in the last few years.

Here it's pretty much either them or Tory and I will never vote Tory. I'm optimistic that GC voices will get heard more in future so won't base my entire vote based on that but it's something I intend to challenge them on!

I only have Labour, UKIP, and Conservatives standing in my area. I'm spoiling my ballot.

I could never vote Green either, despite having been an environmentalist all my life. It's not just their bizarre, culty adherence to weirdo, reality-denying 'gender-identity' ideology, nor their dangerous lack of safeguarding, and their nativity about sexism and male violence. But they are absolutely hopeless too. Completely disorganised, and overrun with trans activists who hijacked them about 4 years ago

Shit. I didn't know about Will Duckworth. Once went for a drink with him. There was something 'off' about him that I couldn't put my finger on. And now I know what it was.

I used to be heavily involved in the party.

I'm now (since the Coventry scandal and wokegate generally) ignoring their canvassers and spoiling my ballot paper today (unless there's an interesting independent candidate).

They had some of the best years of my life. I've done my bit. They've fucked it up.

Patrick Jarvie (leader of the Greens in Scotland) has recently convinced me not to vote Green, having recently retweeted a tweet that called Joan McAlpine 'weekly wanker'. Such a crass, insulting way to respond to someone whose views you oppose.

The Greens tend to be especially nice people, who care about animals and trees and stuff, but aren’t grounded in class analysis, so it made them especially easy to hijack. One of the local female candidates is currently scaling peak trans before my very eyes, interestingly enough.

The Lib Dems are habitually socially liberal, so they just accepted that this was the next stage of LGBT rights and didn’t give it much thought. They were also easy to hijack.

Labour are a combination of both of the above but with the added problem of some loud mouth SJW influencers (think Evergreen College) and a history of male dominance due to the relationship with industrial unions. Women in Labour and the TU movement have historically been encouraged to meet and organise separately, because sex is a class, but they haven’t always had the results of that organising respected/acted upon.
My local labour branch passed an ‘AWS are for women only’ motion (which currently means bio women and those with a GRC) and I know that most of our women councillors are terves (only the childless ones aren’t!) the problem is, how many of the men are taking them seriously, are they paying more attention to the trendy SJW’s in national politics than they are to actual Labour women on the ground locally? Probably.
Labour look like they’ve been hijacked, but internally, it’s not so clear cut. They need a top level female figure head to snap and blow the top off the pressure cooker - like we are seeing in the SNP. The question is, do any of them have the ovaries to do so? Or are they unwilling to risk their virtue cookies (and more seriously, their physical safety - especially after what happened to Jo Cox)?

I don’t really know any active conservatives, but I suspect the younger ones fit into the Lib Dem way of thinking and the older ones don’t really care much either way and are leaving it to the younger ones to figure out, especially after they got to enjoy the credit for same sex marriage. If they are affluent enough not to be affected much (private schools, private healthcare, private sports facilities, jobs that don’t entail getting changed in the workplace etc) then it’s probably barely on their radar. Doubt many actually believe TWAW though (and they won’t want biological boys in the girls grammar schools and vice versa).