How to spoil your ballot paper

[CandidateX]

I am not telling anyone what to do. I am giving information. This is because I have seen how posters are treated on other threads giving this information, and it isn't very nice!

Do what ever you want, but here is some information about spoilt ballot papers.

If you write on your paper, whatever message, it will NOT BE READ. Except maybe by the counter that puts it into the spoilt ballot paper list. But only if they have time to read it, mostly not.

It will be held up and agreed to be spoilt, in front of a committee open to all parties. but they won't read it, and the person holding it up won't read it. No one has time. Many papers are spoilt. Everyone is tired and busy. No one will be standing close enough to read the words.

There is a lot of talk about spoilt ballot papers being scrutinised by candidates, and this is how to get a message across to them.

NOT TRUE

Ballot papers are not scrutinised if they have been written across.

I have a list of circumstances when I might ask to inspect a paper closely, and papers written on don't come into it. I would not waste my time or anyone else's time on a paper that is clearly deliberately spoilt, because the business of the night is count votes, and there are literally tens of thousands to count, and that is clearly not one of them

The ones that are scrutinised are the ones that MIGHT have a valid vote on them.

So if you want to put a message on your paper to be scrutinised, then it must have something on it that might be counted as a valid vote. That way, people in the confirmation committee will be looking closely at your paper, and only then will they see the message.

A paper that is signed is invalid if the signature can be read.

If you want to spoil your paper then you need to make it worthy of discussion, about whether it has a vote on it or not.

So I suggest a CLEAR vote, for whichever party you dislike least. And your written comment that you want to be read. And a scrawled signature, which is not your name, and not legible.

This, I think, might get your comments read by agents of different parties - because they will be discussing whether this is a valid paper or not, and does that vote count, and is that signature legible. Your vote might or might not be counted in the end, probably not, but possibly, so don't do this if you definitely don't want to be counted.

Of course, the message might still not be mentioned to the candidate, or to anyone else at all, but this is the only way I can think of to get comments on a spoilt ballot paper read, because otherwise it doesn't happen, it is just a count for the spoilt paper party, and no one knows or cares why.

OK- this is what I saw - and I made a point of attending ALL sessions with spoilt ballots, in many counts so I have seen hundreds and hundreds over the past few hours....

Official holds it up and says why it is disqualified, which is voter identified, or voter intention unclear, or multiple candidates selected.

95% of spoilt ballots are voting for more than one candidate, or leaving it blank. generally by mistake, I think, or misunderstanding the rules. These are quickly disqualified. Also, crossing through all boxes or all candidates, etc, isn't classed as not wanting any of them, it is just voter intention unclear, because it could equally be interpreted as liking and supporting all of them. Some people do seem to vote for everybody

Some papers are written on, these are held up with announcement "voter intention unclear - no clear vote" and it might be mentioned that there is a personally commentary added. If it is large and clear, it might be readable, but mostly not, and these are also immediately stamped as disqualified.

Then there are the ones which are genuinely unclear - smudged, or voter has changed their mind and changed their vote, or something in box other than a cross, or accidental second mark, etc.

These are carefully scrutinised by everyone and the official says what decision he has made, and mostly people agree, sometimes there is further discussion, sometimes there is no agreement and the paper is disqualified anyway,

Some papers were discussed at length because the voter intention was clear, but they were marked in such a way that they could be identified. Even a clear single initial is too much identification. So those papers were carefully scrutinised and discussed, and a decision was made.

I spent hours watching and contributing to this overnight! There was no reading, recording or discussion about written notes on papers, as that was entirely irrelevant, all discussion was about papers that were unclear in some way, and that took a long time!

As to did I personally read any of the comments? Well I tried to as they were held up. There was one issue I read several times, as it was written in two words very very large across some papers - there was no record or comment made by the process though, just that the comment was visible to people who were close enough and looking. ( most of the people present were not)

So one issue was mentioned a couple of times. A second and third issue I saw written about twice each.

None of these issues were the one that most people here seemed to be concerned with, although some of the smaller writing could potentially have been related to that, which I could not see. (and no one else could see)

One of the second two issues was comments in support of the opposite view that is generally held here.

Of course, I have only seen about 8 counts, so I am only talking about what happened locally and last night.