If you voted already, did you spoil your ballot?

[HesGotHisTrombolyse]

I just voted - I couldn't align with any of the parties in their current state but I felt spoiling my ballot was not the best move. So I voted. If you voted already today, did you spoil your ballot? If so, is it because you couldn't align with any of the parties 'on offer'?

But almost half the nation didn't vote. That's effectively a 'spoil' isn't it?
It's saying I don't want to vote for anyone, I either: can't be arsed, I know nothing about politics or none of them represent me.
All of these reasons are surely a failure of people in power to relate to half the population?

100%

It would be interesting to find out what proportion of people who didn't vote, couldn't vote due to lack of photo ID.

You seriously think they will actually care? They are more likely to think you are an idiot. It really doesn't achieve anything, it's just a pathetic gesture.

It's amazing how angry this makes some people.

Isn't it?

This election is a weird one too.

Starmer has acknowledged how fragile his landslide actually is.

They know that youth turnout was down massively.

They know that there is a backlash culture there.

They know that the Conservatives now have an identity crisis as a party to deal with. They know there's more votes to be won by going softly and reassuring the electorate who go to the ballot box and trying to rebuild trust than by trying to chase too hard on none voters.

There's a whole bunch of reasons to quietly deprioritise a few policies citing the import of others. Especially since there's likely to be other incoming developments which make pushing too hard and too soon will make them look bad anyway.

I'd honestly question the agenda of the people suggesting I should spoil my ballot in protest, what an amazing way to deny women's voices in the democratic process, no matter what message you write no one will care past the count and recording it as a spoilt ballot, writing to your MP diligently and often serves a much greater purpose than spoiling the one chance you have every 5 years for your voice to matter in your constituency, let's take the example of Jonathan Ashworth, if someone had suggested that the people who voted against him spoil their ballots and write something like 'Palestinian lives matter' as a protest they would have achieved nothing, instead they voted for an independent candidate and that will make Labour take more notice of what happened

Tl;Dr Questioj the agenda of those telling you to spoil your ballot do they really value your voice

Comprehension issues? Nobody has told anybody to spoil their vote. What has happened is a discussion between likeminded people who were going to / did spoil their votes.

The only ones providing instructions were the ones insisting that people should vote for somebody, nay, anybody (despite the posters saying they'd thought long and hard and still had nobody to vote for).

Spoiling is perfectly acceptable in a democracy.

But pointless and achieves nothing

I would never chose to spoil my papers nor would I opt to not vote.
It's often a case of selecting the least bad of the bunch.

In a FPTP system, voting for anybody but the person who wins in your constituency also achieves nothing in reality.

Vote share will raise more alarm bells than some message on a spoilt ballot, do you not think Reform getting such a high vote share in constituencies where they didn't win hasn't sounded alarm bells in every single other party? So even if your chosen candidate lost vote share matters and is likely to be taken more seriously on what issue fringe or otherwise they campaigned on

Labour and the Lib Dems also need to acknowledge how much the Reform vote actually translated into seats for them, by splitting the Tory vote. Celebrate your large number of seats by all means, but it would be naive to interpret that as a sign that voters are embracing progressive causes.

If there had been an independent candidate standing on a pro woman platform in my constituency I would have voted for them.

I didn't have that option so spoiling my ballot paper with a feminist statement was the closest thing I could do.

I do plan to write regularly to my new Tory MP about women's rights.

I'm not a Labour voter and as I said all the parties need to look at why Reforms message is cutting through but spoiling your ballot adds nothing to the democratic process except giving the spoiler some imagined chagrin on the part of the candidate, they don't give a toss about the twee message written on it and if they did then I'm sure they'd have to do the same with other nonsense written on spoiled ballots, engagement in the processes as they stand is the only way to enact change, I thought you didn't get your postal vote on time and spoiling a postal both seems an even more pointless waste of time when you're not even in the country

I...really don't care what you think?

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