Spoiled ballots?

Voted in EU elections here in Spain and found the list for the feminist initiative. As they are gender critical and anti prostitution being sex work it was a pleasure to vote for them. They came in with better numbers than quite a few of the smaller parties. There were men on the list also, but most of the pre publicity was for the women standing.in some areas the papers were hidden or removed. In my voting station there were thousands of the things ...possibly from other areas! Here there are blank papers to show you don't approve of any of the candidates.

You can hope that but it doesn't happen.

No, that doesn't happen.

so the eu results are in and we can all just hope that someone, somewhere gathers all the spoiled papers together, reads them seriously, works out what was said, explains it to everyone, and all people and parties take note. excellent.

Occasionalkite
Same. Am also in Wales. After the comments upthread I put one cross clearly in the Plaid box, but also put the woman definition in the box with the name.
I know that might just get thrown out. I didn’t know what to do really. Plaid have the idiotic Woods, but also the feminist assembly member Helen Mary Jones.

Sorry wrong thread.

Early readings also seem to show poor performance for Labour voters though.

This smells brexitty

lincolnshirereporter.co.uk/2019/05/higher-turnout-for-eu-elections-than-locals/

More Lincolnshire people on average turned out to vote in the EU Elections than the May 2 local elections from preliminary council figures.

East Lindsey District Council has yet to give its turnout figures but the average of the other six councils comes out as a turnout of around 33.8% for yesterday’s poll. For May 2’s vote at local level the turnout was almost four per cent lower at 29.79%.

The highest turnout so far is in South Kesteven, where 36.6% of voters took part, while the lowest was South Holland District Council with 32.12%.

In comparison, East Lindsey District Council and North Kesteven District Council saw the highest turnouts in the local elections with around 31% each. However, South Holland was still the lowest turnout with 28.05% of the vote.

And

BBC – EU: 32.7%, Local: 27.34%
SHDC – EU: 32.12%, Local: 28.05%
SKDC – EU: 36.6%, Local: 30.56%
NKDC – EU: 34,39%, Local: 31.28%
CoL – EU: 32.37%, Local: 29.29%
WLDC – EU: 34.5%, Local: 30.75%
ELDC – EU: not-yet-supplied, Local: 31.28%
TOTAL: EU: 33.79% (without ELDC), Local: 29.79%

I'm reading that as a Conservative vote collapse and big swings to Brexit Party.

Having read that back I should probably add (sorry for repeated posting) that my disagreement with the Greens was years ago and connected to other assumptions of middle class backgrounds and wealth, while they actually seemed to do nothing, not the TRA debate. Greens being disconnected from normal lives is not new.

I'm not saying you're wrong btw, it's just that we are running out of options here. The mainstream is not listening to women, and it is imo idealistic optimism to pretend that it can be overturned by the usual channels.

Unfortunately joining political parties and working from within is proving a mite difficult at the moment. I used to believe in that. Then I joined the Greens, and left not long after. Even the "Women's" Equality Party is asking women to leave.

Darkatendoftunnel I’m afraid I can’t see any solution that involves defacing a ballot paper like a toddler with a sharpie.

There are other, better ways of making your voice heard.
You can lobby, you can campaign, you can join political parties and work from within.

Of course, you can always vote for the parties that do not declare a belief that transwomen are women: there were a few in yesterday’s election, not mentioned by the “spoil your ballot” advocators - I wonder why?

I have yet to see Conservative voters, or UKIP voters, or BP voters, or Leave voters encouraged to spoil their ballots. Quite the contrary! Again, I wonder why?

Do you know how they record spoiled ballots?

www.spelthorne.gov.uk/article/18369/Ashford-Common-Borough-Election-2-May-2019

That’s one of the neater ones; some just post a copy of a scribbled form, same data.
So how are they going to analyse all these spoiled ballots, I wonder? Who will care enough to bother?

Spoiling your ballot counts for nothing, no one will take any notice. Vote for the least worst option in your opinion.

Too late now I know

why do you think so?

a spoiled ballot paper is a gift to fascists.

What a ridiculous statement!

I agree with Tanith. Nobody cares about spoiled ballots unless in a constituency the result was really close in which case the candidates would want them scrutinised to make 100% sure they could not be allocated.

If that keeps up, somebody somewhere will have to take note and wonder what they're in aid of

can you elaborate on who this somebody somewhere might have:
a. all the information collated on the reasons why each ballot paper was destroyed.
b. will have the power or desire to respond to them- and not voters themselves.

a spoiled ballot paper is a gift to fascists.

Being in Wales, I had the option of voting Plaid Cymru (pro Remain) and I did.

Plaid Cymru's former leader, Leanne Wood, was recorded as saying "TWAW", which really, really, really put me off.

The current leader is Adam Price

I shall have to write and ask him.

I can also identify with all who spoilt their ballots. I've done that in the past, too.

I voted Change, Despite my strong pro remain stance I couldn't bring myself to vote libdem or green. Rest immediate family are male, they will all have voted libdem because whilst they agree with me that twanw they are not the people being thrown under the bus so will have forgotten how abhorrent the libDems are at least my youngest son was sorry once he realised what he'd done
Part of the problem is sons had no clue who Change are.

Tanith, and your solution therefore is...?
At least in the local elections there were a few headlines about the unprecedented number of spoilt ballots. If that keeps up, somebody somewhere will have to take note and wonder what they're in aid of. If everyone who currently does not vote because they're not represented went and spoiled ballots, from what I remember of the last GE numbers, they would actually outnumber the votes cast for one party or another. Naturally all of those would not be about women's rights, but it would be an interesting position.

The suffragettes fought for the right to vote because they wanted power for women, and the vote was a way of achieving it.

It's misunderstanding that fight to assume the vote is the end in itself. If voting disempowers women e.g. by being forced to vote for parties who want to abolish womanhood then obviously women should resist if they can.

I did vote for an anti-Brexit party today but it pissed me off that I did because they're also pro-trans. I wanted my vote to be part of the anti-Brexit popular vote however. I don't know what I'll do at the next general election. Men's politics is not for women.

The Lib Dems are terrible on self id, and single sex space aren’t they ? They also welcomed Amy Challenor with open arms .

And thanks to everyone for their views on this, I honestly don’t think I would have bothered to vote otherwise, it helped me to make a decision.

I’ve been agonising about this all day, read as much as I could and, despite being a life long Labour supporter, I voted Lib Dem. I just couldn’t NOT vote so voted for the least worst option ( at least on this issue...)

I am struggling to understand the logic of spoiling your vote because you believe none of the candidates represents your views.

If you think they won’t listen to you if you did vote for them, what on earth makes you think they’ll take a blind bit of notice of a handful of scrawled-on papers ?