To let people know how to spoil their ballot?

[HoofWankingSpangleCunt]

Today 13:59HoofWankingSpangleCunt

This election has really brought it home to me how uncomfortable I am voting for any of the three main parties. I don't want to vote for the local Independent on a donkey sanctuary ticket* just because I feel I have to vote for someone. If I do that my concerns about the other parties goes unnoticed.
So tonight Matthew, I'll be spoiling my ballot. It has to be done a certain way to count as spoilt. If enough of us do this then voices will be heard.
advice on how to do it correctly
I'm going to pop my AIBU Vote Button cherry on this thread as it seems apt.
*Or whatever the local issue is.

Subject:
To let people know how to spoil their ballot?

Message:
This election has really brought it home to me how uncomfortable I am voting for any of the three main parties. I don't want to vote for the local Independent on a donkey sanctuary ticket* just because I feel I have to vote for someone. If I do that my concerns about the other parties goes unnoticed.
So tonight Matthew, I'll be spoiling my ballot. It has to be done a certain way to count as spoilt. If enough of us do this then voices will be heard.

I'm going to pop my AIBU Vote Button cherry on this thread as it seems apt.
*Or whatever the local issue is.

I do the count too and agree - no-one cares about the spoilt papers. It's not some sort of grand gesture - merely a waste of time.

Anyhoo, this is the advice on how to do it correctly

You really need instructions on how to spoil a ballot paper? Do you think they take all the spoiled ballot papers and divvy them in to piles of protest, profanity, idiotic drawing etc and then count the 'correctly spoiled' ones? They don't.

I do the count too and agree - no-one cares about the spoilt papers. It's not some sort of grand gesture - merely a waste of time.

Exactly. You don't have the time to read some protest diatribe on every spoiled paper.

But your vote does count - a swing of 3000 from Conservative to Labour would unseat Shaps

But your vote does count - a swing of 3000 from Conservative to Labour would unseat Shaps confused

Not sure why you are confused that in super-safe seats, there is often no swing at all that would unseat an incumbent.

If you add up ALL the votes in the last general election in my constituency - including all the spoiled ballots - the combined total of the Labour, Lib Dem, Green Party and the well-regarded independent candidates would not have been enough to unseat the incumbent.

@BoneyBackJefferson

Just like voting for anyone else but the incumbent MP in a safe seat

Possibly. But what if so many people are thinking that and actually if they all just voted properly maybe it could change even by just one or two? (Nightmare for us counting because when it's that close they'll make us recount 4 or 5 times!)

I'm sure it's unlikely in most places but I'm not risking it. I was in a so called 'safe seat' that suddenly surprised everyone (in an election 1 month before I was 18 annoyingly but it did go the way I'd hoped at least). One of my local councillors held his position by 3 votes earlier this year so even though our MP is regarded to be pretty safe I just won't take the chance

Nobody give me a shit about a spoilt ballot. You may as well stay home and have a packet of Hob-Nobs.

Luckily I'm made of thick skin, eh?

Thank you to the posters no squirrels boney Bellini surge lying shiny and I apologise if I've left you off..

I'm nearly 50, I have voted in every single election, local and general in my life. I am not stupid, pathetic or immature like some of you have said. I'm not spitting on the graves of Suffragettes ffs. In fact, I believe the Pankhursts and co could probably understand why I feel forced to do this.

Do you think I like having this choice, I cannot in all consciousness vote for a party whose policies repel me. I will remain politically active on the day and not stay home. But you can all fuck off with your patronising, this is how democracy works. I know how the world works. I also know that my seat won't ever not be Tory unless a fucking tsunami takes out this section of Hertfordshire.

Someone up thread put it very well, how less pointless is spoiling a vote then voting fur the Least Shit in a very safe seat. There aren't 3000 people who can be arsed to vote against them. Believe me I have talked to anyone and everyone in my local area.

People are fed up, and they're not voting. I don't want to not vote so I'll do the thing that I can best live with.

Oh by the way, whichever poster blamed me and my ilk for Brexit, you can fuck off too. Blame the people who voted leave for that,Blane the politicians who lied and were financed by dodgy rich businessmen. However, I voted Remain and would vote Remain again in a heartbeat. It's just that this election is the first in my life where I am truly disillusioned.

• To spoil your ballot paper is an insult to those who fought for you to have the vote. Universal suffrage is a right that was paid for in blood. *

I think the suffragettes fought for the right to vote (be on the electoral role, have the chance to go out and vote, going out to vote) and spoiling a paper is using a vote. Voting doesn’t have to mean choosing one of the parties on offer. I call this ‘voting for democracy’; you are showing that you want to participate and are participating. That is in no way disrespectful to anyone who fought for universal suffrage, quite the opposite.

Oh and the repeat thread was a mistake. I actually created the other first but when I tried to post I got an Access Denied message. So I created this one. I didn't realise the other had posted. Sorry to disappoint any of you who were palpably frothing at my posting two threads.

Yes lozster you are on the money. That is my point. Otherwise I'd be stopping at home on the day. I do care, I want to vote. I am still voting by turning up.
That point seems to above the heads of a lot of posters on here.

I hate all this ‘spitting on suffragette’s graves’ shite.

Imo they fought to give women equal rights to men. They achieved it.

I’m choosing not to vote this time. Which I have the same right as a man to choose.

I don’t see that heaping a lot of additional pressure and expectation on women only is really in the spirit of the whole equality thing that the suffragettes fought for.

@HopefulFor2020

As I have previously posted where I live if everyone that voted against the incumbent MP voted for the same party, the incumbent would still win by a huge margin.

(Nightmare for us counting because when it's that close they'll make us recount 4 or 5 times!)

You knew this when you volunteered for the job.

“ There will be a lot of political lackeys on mn at the mo trying to snap up the floating/despondent voters by getting us to vote for the 'least worst option'. Don't give them the satisfaction.”

On the contrary, there are a lot of political lackeys desperately trying to stop people voting. Despondent voters suit them just fine; it’s those who see it as their duty to turn up at the polling station they want to silence.

If you really, really want to make change, then join a political party and influence from within. Look at the way the parties have changed in recent years by people doing exactly that.

Bellinisurge, it may have been an act of bravery in Russia, but you are not in Russia now - though the disinformation tactics being used for this election may have confused you

@Tanith , thanks and no thanks. I'm not a fucking idiot. I can see me spoiling my paper suits all sorts of scumbags. I don't need you explaining the bloody obvious.
But I still have no one to vote for. There still is no least worst.

And I'm not joining the fucking Labour Party with a leader who needs a nudge before he realises that a poster is full of antisemitic images.

@BoneyBackJefferson

You knew this when you volunteered for the job

I wasn't complaining about it. It was a tongue in cheek comment

Protest vote against what?

On the 13th someone will start to form
a government. Once again this process may not be concluded on the day.

On the 12th you can have your day on how it is. Or not. The not can be achieved in multiple ways. None are very likely at all to give more than a few people - who are paid to appear on tv - much pause for thought.

People did indeed die for your right to vote. It isn't mandatory though.

Elections are decided by the people who 'show' up.

Your choice if you are in or out. Please though if you are out don't whinge about the consequences.

This really bloody irritates me. I think it’s a ridiculous waste. It makes me absolutely furious. I know loads of people who did it and the the bloody tories got in and they’ve got the audacity to moan about it as if it isn’t partly their fault for wasting their vote.

Total waste of time.

Spoiling your vote is pathetic, there are still women across the world with no voice, no right to vote. Grow up, educate yourself and make a choice.

This election is about Brexit. It's not about anything else. There is no Tory Brexit vs a Labour Brexit. Until we are out it's all about how we leave. After we leave there is something to argue over - what our free trade agreement will be like. But there is nothing to fight for unless you want to stop Brexit. While in theory, I do, and would vote Remain in any second referendum, I think that would come at a massive price to the country in terms of going against what the majority voted for. And what Parliament agreed to trigger.
I don't want to give any of them the comfort of my support even though I won't try and stop it.

That's my choice z don't fucking patronise me. I've probably been voting since before you were born.

I agree with mummmy2017 when you are counting that many votes at 2am, 3am you really don't give a shiny shit whether someone has spoilt their ballot paper, we genuinely don't care. We just want the votes counted and to go home as some of us have been manning a polling station since before 7am to 10pm.

I have worked in polling stations and some chap comes in asking how anonymous this voting system is, yes because someone is going to go through 1500 ballots to find your specific one to find out who Tony the Nobody voted for. A tinfoil hat for you!

You are making out it is this grand gesture, a fuck you with your fists raised, but no-one cares, they just care about which tosser got in not how many ballots were spoiled.

I love the idea someone writes this epic dialogue on the paper takes them 10 mins and massaged their ego and we take a second to class it as spoiled