Considering spoiling my ballot

[Itisallgoingtobeok]

It makes me really sad to say this, but for the first time in my voting life I'm considering spoiling my ballot. I don't always vote the same way, but I've just looked at who is standing in the May elections and I can't bring myself to vote for any of them.

Even the "least worst" doesn't represent me... I feel if I vote for them I'm endorsing them, and I am definitely not, they are just marginally better than the others.

I was hoping for a decent independent candidate, but sadly no luck there.

Any others in the same boat? What will you do?

Yes but however you vote, someone is going to get in. Find other ways to protest.

I did that with my last council vote.

I filled the ballot with things like, "respect my sex if you want my X' in alternate lines of purple and green.

I got my postal vote a couple of days ago and there is a Party of Women candidate. Her flyer has things like, "No woman has a penis" so she has got my vote.

@ForensicFlossy

Spoiled ballots are counted. Also where a vote is unclear the candidates get to see them in order to see if they can establish whether the voter intended to vote for a candidate.

https://votingcounts.org.uk/spoilt-ballot

There was a brief mention on R4 this morning about a petition to add 'None of the above' as an option to all ballot papers. Could be interesting if it gains traction.

I will vote for the least worst lest the most worst get in.

Spoiling your ballot is pointless.

That sounds interesting. The fact it's even being raised suggests that perhaps there are a lot more people who have nobody to vote for than perhaps the main parties think.

Completely agree OP. For the first time I ever there isn't any political party that I feel aligned to or that offers anything substantively better. I can't vote Tory but as a lifelong Labour voter I can't vote for them either.
Thoroughly disillusioned..

I wish our voting system was the same as Australia. Its compulsory to vote but you can tick a box that says non of the above.

But spoiling your ballot is wasting your vote! (that those suffragettes risked their lives to secure for us)

I can’t understand why anyone would spoil their ballot.

Voting is one of the most effective forms of protest that we as general public have.

I’m not convinced by the argument that spoiling your paper is an equal form of protest.

I would always vote tactically to try to keep the worst candidates (Tories for me) out, at the very least.

I just heard a really interesting respinse to this question by Alexandra Occasio Cortez who is a US congesswoman. She was responding to a Muslim person refusing to vote for Biden.

She said she wouldn’t judge anyone but her metric for choosing who she would vote for was based on her overall political goals for the next four years. She asked herself which administration, a Biden or Trump administration, would be safer for an activist who wanted to organize to push for issues like: the environment, immigration, women’s rights, abortion, peace, elections themselves, democracy, prison reform(she did not list them but these are her concerns).

The choice of an individual candidate is not very meaningful in the grand scheme of things—but the choice of the entire party, administration, judges, etc…will make all future political scts either possible or impossible.

So think about your long term interests and the kind of world you want to do political work in.

This will achieve nothing. In the coming general election the only way to get the tories out is to vote labour so whether I 100% agree with all labour policies or not this is what I shall do.

Actually it's usually about a minute

All spoiled papers are presented to candidates and their agents (I've been both) at the end of a count. Anything particularly artistic or amusing might attract attention but that's it.

Total waste of time nonetheless and achieves feck all.

Just don't vote?

Yeah I'm just voting for the least awful

Spoilt ballots are gone through by the returning officer, candidate and agent and the reason why they are spoilt ie no vote, voting for more than one candidate, doubtful vote (ie a cross goes over two boxes) is recorded.
Done at the end of the and the parties want to make sure that any good votes that might be counted are found rather than reading what’s written on them. As a broad minded female count supervisor I hate the cock and balls drawn in a paper just have an image of a very nasty perverted man doing it.

i agree that it’s better to vote and write your protest on the paper than not vote or leave the paper blank.

I'm totally with you. I'm passionate about democracy and the right to vote, but we only have P&C commissioners to vote for in May and have a choice of thick incumbent vs dumb and dumber wannabes.

I can't in all conscience vote positively for any of them.

No it is the complete opposite of wasting your vote.

Its going out, making the effort to vote - but clearly saying "you're all rubbish"

On my student days, we had RON. Re-open Nominations.

The problem we have is that it wouldn't really change anything, but it would signify displeasure with the options.

A spoiled ballot is scrutinised only to check if there is any way that marks on the paper could be interpreted as a valid vote (and a cock and balls, if clearly only by one candidate can count as a valid vote)

A spoiled ballot is more likely to be seen as “another one who can’t follow instructions” than anyone thinking it’s a deliberate protest

Well vote for the least worst then and get involved in politics to shift the window of what’s acceptable.

I will be spoiling my ballot for the first time. Maybe I will write "women won't wheesht" at the bottom.

I had a postal vote and voted this morning. I held my nose and voted for the least worst in my opinion.

Interestingly when doing some research I stumbled across the Monster Raving Loony Party who are apparently GC!

This effectively wheesting yourself.

I had thought I'd spoil my ballot (postal) but when it came down to it I voted. I think for women it is hard to spoil a ballot particularly in a general election after what the suffragettes did for us.

The whole election is so depressing, but one person being PM on 5th July is more unacceptable to me than the other. My vote is probably of no consequence anyhow as this is a safe seat and I'm not voting for current MP.

@JemimaPatricia - that's exactly where I got to with my thinking. I'm also in a safe seat.

There is no clear way of distinguishing between a post urging women to spoil their ballots for [insert obviously noble cause here] and a targeted voter suppression program or psyops designed to suppress women’s votes and further erode the power of women a bloc to to elect and direct reliable political representation.

If women as a bloc don’t turn out and vote for the causes they espouse then their political influence drops to zero. Not because the cause isn’t righteous but because all politicians follow the old adage “you gotta dance with the ones that brung ya.”

So anyone urging you to spoil your ballot—or claiming to have done so since this is pretty obviously a counterproductive and stupid thing to do, should be regarded with a great deal of suspicion (probably just voter suppression) and contempt (if sincere a profoundly stupid and self defeating act of performative pseudo virtue and electoral suicide.)