Best way to register a protest vote?

[AIstolemylunch]

What's the best way for someone that having see all the manifetos now can't vote for any the mainparties?

One - Cross through all the boxes on the right and write 'NO VOTE' across names - so they know it's a specific no vote and gets recorded as such, rather than as 'voter intention unclear'

Two - Don't go out to vote so contribute to 'historic low voter turn out' to indicate disatisfaction with all the main parties, and indeed British politics today as a whole?

Three - Vote for an independent (if standing)?

Years ago I was part of the count and someone wrote “they’re all c*nts” on the paper. It was classed as a spoil. So was “none of the above” and “I’ve not heard of any of these people”

would actually give a strong message to all parties how fed up everyone is and how many people feel politically homeless

No- it will tell them they can get away with much more. For most of them the ideal scenario is that just one person turns up and that person votes for them.

Far fewer people to be accountable to that way. But still the power.

I think of voting as less like a marriage - I'm not trying to find The One Perfect Partner. It's a step along a journey, so I think of the country I want to live in and vote for who ever gets us closest to it. Even if the closest is still miles away from my destination and I know it'll take several more legs of the journey to get there after them.

I feel the same OP. I will be voting Loonie or spoiling my ballot paper.

What message do you think spoiling the vote will get across?

I count votes and the spoils have to be shown to the candidates so they can agree they're invalid - some are really clear like 'f*ck the tories' written across others are people not making a mark at all or choosing more than one candidate. They have to be checked and logged as invalid so the numbers tally.

That's it. Nothing else's happens.

I do love spoiled votes as they can be quite funny, but what a waste of time- the candidates don't care! The comments are not collated for anything. It means nothing.

Elections are about winning, the how you win doesn't matter at all.

Saw this at Uxbridge, low turn out, plenty of spoilt papers but all the Tories crowed about was that "we won"

Voting is what changes things, look at UKIP? 4m votes, no MPs elected at the GE but changed the course of the country as Cameron ran scared.

Reform may well have the same impact too.

4m spoiled papers wouldn't have had that effect.

It doesn't matter how low the turnout is or how many people spoil their votes.

You will get a new government.

This is really going over your head isnt it? Its not about individual votes changing the outcome. Its about sending a message to that new government. Oh look, even The Guardian get it https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5098189-gendertrans-and-the-next-government?reply=136068194&utm_campaign=reply&utm_medium=share

And let’s not forget women died for universal suffrage, at Peterloo for instance

I think it does actually now. Staying at home could be dont give a shit either way and not politically engaged, or NO VOTE. Actually bothering to go out to the pilling station and write NO VOTE is politically engaged but noone to vote for.

I dont see why actively choosing to do that is 'childish'.

I’m not sure at 46% turnout was low for a by-election, and in themselves spoilt papers (77) were not particularly high either @Alexandra2001

However what was perhaps more interesting was that spoilt papers scored higher than 4 of the 17 candidates, and taking spoilt papers and all those candidates polling at around 100 votes or less each, which 8 of the 17 managed, they totalled more than the winning majority.

I quite agree with you sentiment that it is voting that changes things.

Sadly, a few on this site are unable to comprehend the difference between the 'Right to vote' and the 'Freedom not to vote.'!!
Equality is a must but so it freedom!!

I just can't see any point in spoiling your ballot. Even if if does get shown to the candidates, are they really likely to register whatever protest message you've written on the paper? It will only get buried among all the other spoilt ballots handed in by jokers, the undecided, people who don't understand how ballots work, the incoherently furious and all the other single-issue voters (and there are 1,001 single issues).

The media and Westminster are not interested in spoilt ballots; never in a UK election have I seen a newspaper report focusing on them after a GE. All the attention is on the winners.

Spoiling your ballot doesn’t send a message
It has zero influence or impact
Nor does the “data point” you are determined to be a part of, have any influence on policy or governance.

Spoiling your ballot is a childish, naive vanity only to make you feel good while putting little effort in.

Write to your MP / candidates explaining why they don’t get your vote, if you really do care, OP.

You need to obviously spoil your vote, don't just not turn up.

This is a myth.

They are only counted informally and at the local level of your local polling booth/hut/school hall. They are shown to the candidates as part of the process of transparency to prove that the polling officers are counting up all the votes fairly. But that's it. No data collected, no statistics presented to the political parties, no records kept year on year

Quite a gift for being spectacularly wrong there @RoseUnder

No data collected.....well the House of Commons Library might beg to differ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7529/

In terms of spoilt papers at UK General Elections since 1964, number and percentage of the overall vote.

a whopping 0.38% of the vote is the highest recorded over the past 60 years - in 1979 and 2001 elections, although 2019 was not far behind.

Absolute numbers for the four categories that spoilt ballots are officially recorded under.

In most cases it won't matter what you do on the ballot paper because the only person who sees a spoiled ballot is the person doing the counting, who will be neutral and won't care.

If you want to use spoiling your ballot as a way to send a message you need to do something to make it ambiguous and open to interpretation what you have actually done. If you can do this then the actual candidates or their representatives will scrutinise these ballots to gain their agreement or disagreement about how that vote should be counted/discounted. Such scrutiny will only happen if the vote is a close-run thing.

and the percentage of each spoilt category within the overall spoilt ballot total

As a few pps have mentioned turnout, the General Election overall turnout percentage for every GE back to 1919. The nadir was in 2001 (possibly Iraq War effect explains that in part)

@AIstolemylunch in my view none of your suggestions makes your protest vote count or be worth anything.

The only person who will see it is one individual ballot counter who will be working through 1000s of ballots so most likely won’t read or notice it.

”Spoilt” ballot numbers are recorded and published but are mostly such a very small number that no one notices that either.
I don’t have any other suggestion (since I believe women died to give us the option of voting).
Is it worth weighing up how strongly you feel about status quo v something different? If on balance you’d prefer something different then vote for your second strongest candidate in your seat (assuming you’re in a conservative seat). Or just don’t vote.

Thanks @boys3 that's really interesting. I had no idea the proportion of spoilt ballots was so low.

Presumably the ballots with slogans or messages written on them fall under "unmarked or void for uncertainty"? Which has been escalating in the past 30 years. I'd guess that means a rise in the number of voters who are either so disillusioned with mainstream politics that they write "none of the above", or are fixed on a single issue, such as electoral reform.

Presumably the ballots with slogans or messages written on them fall under "unmarked or void for uncertainty"?

Correct @zaxxon

Brilliant to see people coming forward with actual data, rather than tired slogans and attempts to emotionally blackmail female voters. Or people saying nobody records or sees spoilt ballots with absolutey no evidence to back that up (and it's clearly wrong). Well done @boys3, you're a credit to whatever profession you're in. Will be fascinating to see the eventual results for the 2024 GE.

I suspect, as you say, its such a small percentage of people that spoil ballots because they cant vote for any of the candidates that it will pass without much comment. OTOH I don't remember there being such a number of people talking about red lines and single issues that they cant compromise on. I think unfortunately most of this will actually translate into conservative votes though.

But the electoral commission has said that it would be easy to install and would make the democratic process better as being forced to vote for someone that you don't believe in is not democratic at all.
And its not a waste of time as it shows how many people are dissatisfied with the current system and parties.