To instigate a mass ballot spoiling?

[NobodyToVoteForNow]

With the local elections a few weeks away, and with a heavy heart, I've had to admit to myself there's literally no political party that recognises women as a distinct sex class with distinct legal protections under equalities legislation. And of course the added racism of the two main parties rules them both out anyway.

Knowing that candidates often have to help officials decide what spoiled ballots 'mean' - (do they represent a vote cast for a particular candidate or not?) gives me hope that this is a small way to get the message across at a local level.

I'm going to spoil my ballot with a hashtag that demonstrates the bitter irony of this occurring a hundred years since female suffrage. I'm a bit short on catchy slogans though, so if anyone else is thinking along similar lines, perhaps we could pool our ideas and come up with something fitting?

It's a local election. You need 10 signatures to stand as a candidate. That's more of a message than a wasted ballot, surely?

But for the love of god, do you really think someone can claim to support women's rights and still vote UKIP? Surely it's just obvious how nonsensical that is?

I didn't say I'd vote UKIP. I said I'd spoilt the ballot. Because there is no option to vote for anyone.

I've been there and done that fallen. Besides the deadline is long gone.

All of the parties standing local to me think woman isn't a biological reality. I want none of them in.

OK, but one must have some policies you agree with, so you engage with that MP, express your views & tell them that you expect them to look into or take action on those issues on the future if they want to keep your vote.

Or you can write some drivel on the paper,

Or stay at home....

I'm afraid a lot of these responses make me think of petulant teenagers.

Thank f*ck we don't let 16 year olds vote - imagine the angst then....

I'm afraid a lot of these responses make me think of petulant teenagers.

I am a 50 year old petulant teenager then.

OK, but one must have some policies you agree with, so you engage with that MP, express your views & tell them that you expect them to look into or take action on those issues on the future if they want to keep your vote.

Anti-semitism and erasing women. Yay - go the Labour Party.

Other options - The Green Party who stand for men and non-men. Yay - go the non-Red party.

Conservatives. Never.

So that leaves...nobody.

to me obvious what party cares about women the party that has a female leader not the one that never has.

opionated

What do the Tories do for women?

Make them Prime Minister!

I have written to 8 MPs, 5 have got back to me . Surprisingly Labour Party have been silent, no reply.
My mp is conservative and he agrees wit me.
We need to think of an extra box , sign, promote it on twitter and Facebook and stand united with the suffragettes 100 yrs on. If we don't shout, no one will hear us and I'm fed up of the silence from MPs. I'm fed up of been told I'm being stupid when I bring this up. I'm fed up of people laughing about this. I'm fed up of a group of fuckwit men thinking they can wade in and remove or include themselves in privileges we have fought for , walking all over the trans folk who have lived beside us and making their lives difficult. I'm fed up of saying till I'm blue in the face that a lesbian doesn't have a penis. Does that make my partner a lesbian because he loves me? It's an absolute shit storm and I can't believe I'm so late to the party.
Getting off my soap box, sorry if I've rambled I'm full of a cold, man flu on a Friday

The only reason the Tory men let TM be PM is that none of the likely lots wanted to deal with the shitty stick that is Brexit - far too much like hard work for little or no reward. They’ll bin her and install a man just as soon as Brexit is done, and she’ll be blamed forever more. She is not there because they are championing women’s rights.

I am a 50 year old petulant teenager then.

Indeed.

So have you ever voted? If all the parties are erasing women, you might as well vote for the party that's going to erase women and empty your bins regularly......

Like I said aeons ago, if you don't vote, don't whinge later on........

So have you ever voted? If all the parties are erasing women, you might as well vote for the party that's going to erase women and empty your bins regularly......

I once took public transport after work, back home - travelling about 5 hours on public transport - just getting there at the last minute - and then getting up about 4am the next day to get to work on time - just to vote.

OF COURSE I FUCKING VOTE THAT IS THE POINT OF THE FUCKING PROBLEM.

Oh ffs! Why spoil your ballot? Really? Won’t make a blind bit of difference and you will have had no say whatsoever in what happens.

Ridiculous

These are local elections so they're about bin collections, pot holes, funding local services, whether you agree with the way your local council is prioritising very, very limited resources. Sure all the main political parties look at them as evidence of how people intend to vote in General Elections but this just isn't the place to protest about gender.

And I would argue that a General Election isn't the place either - this is not a more important issue than Syria, Brexit, NHS funding, austerity policies etc etc etc.

Of course it's your right to use your vote as you wish but it's playing into the 'hysterical Mumsnetters are TERFs' narrative in my opinion. It just seems misplaced and as others have said, pretty pointless.

Speak to your local council candidates when they come knocking on your door and they might pass the feedback back to their respective local party machines but the counters at the local election count who will see this 'protest' - they have no influence.

Tbh I spoilt my ballot at the last election. In our area it is a safe seat and the other parties here were just as bad.
Local I’ll vote but not for big parties.

The only ridiculous thing about this thread is the number of people happy to vote their way to a future where it is no longer possible for women to have a meaningful conversation about themselves and their oppression under patriarchy, uber.

illustrious you might be happy to vote for a party wheel you only agree with one policy out of a hundred, but clearly many of us are looking for the bigger picture and the world view that party represents and being incredibly disturbed by what we find.

Like I said aeons ago, if you don't vote, don't whinge later on.......
Not voting is just that spoiling your ballot paper is quite different it's a protest vote, like writing in 'None of the Above.'
I am going to go with "FUCK SELF-ID - Former Labour Voter and Supporter."
If enough people do it the political parties will notice. But clearly it would have to be a mass movement, one that will show up as a discrepancy in the overall voter turnout as compared with the candidates' actual votes.

AFAICR the returning officer announces the result of an election with the total number of ballots cast then gives the number for each candidate, and then the number of spoilt papers. (usually very few)
And for those who say no-one looks at the spoilt ballots, DH has been both a candidate (local elections) and agent (general elections) and has inspected the spoilt ballots many times, and not just for shits and giggles as have the officers from the other parties.

tygr the power of local government may be limited to those issues, but for candidates and campaigners, with turnout already so low in a local election - every vote matters. That's why you'll see candidates and their supporters trawling the seats and telling at polling atations right up til 10pm. They are the ones who'll be watching the votes like hawks as they're counted. They're the ones who'll be kicking themselves at a pile of spoilt ballots wondering if they could have done anything in the preceeding months to turn those into votes.

From experience, it's extremely common for voters to vote based on a party's stance on national and international issues.

Trawling the streets

Of course it's your right to use your vote as you wish but it's playing into the 'hysterical Mumsnetters are TERFs' narrative in my opinion. It just seems misplaced and as others have said, pretty pointless.
Speak to your local council candidates when they come knocking on your door and they might pass the feedback back to their respective local party machines but the counters at the local election count who will see this 'protest- they have no influence.

This comes across not only as patronising in tone, it also contains a fair bit of what could be seen as mansplaining. I wonder if the Labour party is indeed getting concerned about losing women's votes. After a prominent transwoman on Twitter told women "Welcome to your erasure" I would say for many of us this issue is definitely up there with Syria and Brexit.

FWIW, Nobody I think a mass campaign could have an impact but I don't think that, in the current climate, Mumsnet is the place to do it, sadly.

Bold fail alert

From experience, it's extremely common for voters to vote based on a party's stance on national and international issues

Of course! local Government has such limited powers, their funds are completely controlled by central Government, they have targets and limts imposed by government.
IF i vote next time around, it will be based on national policies because they truly effect what happens at local level.

A bit o/t but what the hell. I was once at a count for a council by-election where one of the ballot papers had a bottle rather than an X opposite a candidate’s name? The Returning Officer had to decide: was it a vote for Mr A or a comment (accurate) about his private life or both?

The decision was to park the question and see whether it made any difference; which it did not.

As for a mass campaign like the OP suggests: if every woman spoilt her paper this year the councils would be elected by men, and it wouldn’t be our fault.

Of course it's your right to use your vote as you wish but it's playing into the 'hysterical Mumsnetters are TERFs' narrative in my opinion

That’s lazy - and indeed misogynistic - rhetoric.

Having concerns about self-ID does NOT equal TERF

It's not my rhetoric but it's rhetoric that's currently being played out all over the place at the moment with various people looking for reasons to attack Mumsnet as transphobic. I happen to agree with you but I also think a call to a mass protest to spoil ballots at the local elections is really daft and giving those that wish to attack Mumsnet and its members more ammunition.