h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As of last time I went on a count (election before last), 'spoilt' papers were kept separately and read.

During a long evening of counting and watching counting in a safe seat they are, after all, just about the only points of interest.

If it's a close vote they're all scrutinised to confirm that they really are spoilt votes - candidates and their reps read them.

So not only does it stop the candidates writing off low turnout as apathy but any comments written on the slip to spoil it might just perhaps make a drop of a difference. If they're written clearly and sanely anyway.



It just occurred - is it possible to spoil votes when voting online?

Now that is interesting. I may well add it to the entry, if I may, Waz. This is the UK you are talking about, isn't it?

Ben

Sure, and yes it's UK.

I'm really curious now what online voting lets you do. It could be designed not even to let you put in an umarked vote.

I'll go ask in 'Ask'.

Grmrfrrrmrgrmph spoilt ballot papers grrmmphfrlhmph

Well, leaving aside my professional (and impartial) dislike of ballot papers which cannot be counted and have to be waved in the air for the count supervisor to take somewhere else ... very good points, well-made.

I used to think that people had died in order to give me the freedom to choose whether or not to vote - but I revised that opinion after years of listening to tax-payers whingeing in the pub about Nothing Being Done and What Do We Pay Our Taxes for ... when they hadn't ever bothered to involve themselves in the democratic process.

This is particularly true of local elections. Turnout for County Council elections is appallingly low (one reason for combining County with Parliamentary elections is that it improves the turnout for the County). But over half of many people's council tax bill goes to the County Council, and there are generally lots of complaints about how high that bill is. I personally think that people who fail to show up at a polling station (or don't apply for an absent vote or whatever) have no right to complain about the service they then receive.

I know from experience that electors are NOT necessarily deleted from the electoral register if they fail to return the annual canvass form in October. So there will be electors who think that returning this information is unnecessary, because "I've never sent the form back and I always get my poll card OK". Not having had to stir themselves to any action in order to keep their right to vote, no wonder they then don't bother to exercise that right. If electoral registration officers were tougher about this, and deleted some of the apathetic minority from the register, and these people then found that they didn't get poll cards and had therefore *lost* their right to vote (and their credit rating too, incidentally, which seems to worry more people), that might provide the boot up the backside which many people seem to need.

Incidentally, if this is going into the Post before 5 May, it would be worth mentioning that the cut-off date for getting onto the electoral register for elections on 5 May was 11 March, so anybody who isn't on the register now won't be able to vote this time anyway. Electors who have moved house and are still registered at their old address can make absent voting arrangements to vote by post or proxy, but need to do this by 26 April.

Mol

I asked in Ask, and got no reply! As yet. There used to be a competition to try and have a single post thread in Ask. I've managed two now. The other, a question about National Insurance, I could understand .

Mol, what's your view of increasing postal votes and online voting? I've thought it undermined the sense of occasion, and might lead to fewer votes in the long run but it seems to be considered the way to go.

Waz (remembering setting the voting returns alight with flaming red sealing wax... those were the days)

Just a reminder that conversations about the election should be here: A3772974 and not continued in this thread or attached to this page.

Ben