1y ago

Anyone else considering spoiling their ballot in the next election?

Don't get me wrong, I will probably cave at the last minute and vote SNP again for a number of reasons. Mostly, being supportive of a number of their progressive policies that I have benefited from over the years, and also because my constituency is a two horse race between them and the Tories who I will never vote for. Though the SNP are probably now at their lowest point in years since they finally managed to oust Sturgeon.

I will also never vote Labour, they have no identity here and during the 2019 election they were campaigning for the Tories to oust SNP here, so 100% fuck them too.

I once voted for Lib Dem and we ended up with the catastrophic Clegg/Cameron coalition (though due to FPTP my vote didn't matter there.)

I would like to vote for Green, but it would be a wasted vote here.

It's just bizarre to me that Westminster's voting system is such that a vast majority of votes in the UK are binned, how is this considered normal?

Sorry for the rant, but I am just so incredibly disillusioned with politics in this shitehole of a country but absolutely refuse to be passive about it since that is what they want us to be.

71 comments

No. I consider it crucial to remove the current Tory government, and while the likely Labour government may not be perfect in my eyes they would still be an improvement.
Rain or shine I will turn up on polling day to vote for whoever has the best of chance of unseating the incumbent Conservative MP I’m stuck with.
- That's what FPTP does, is turn every election into a hostage crisis. We need to stump for a better system while we play along with this one.
  
  Annoyingly, I don't see how this is done though.
  Those with the power to push for a voting system change are the ones voted in by the current voting system. Unless we get some real, for the good of the country, politicians they're unlikely to vote for a system that would see them not voted in.
- Yep, SNP it is then.

Firstly, I upvoted the post because I'd like to see more discussion in this community rather than mere news.
As for your idea about spoiling your ballot. I'm not sure I understand the point of spoiling if you yourself would admit that you'd happily vote Green. Vote Green (if possible).
A sudden uptick in votes for other parties might do more to get the bigger parties to take notice then drawing a dick on your ballot paper.
- It's definitely between Green and SNP for me I think. I'll wait and see what the manifestos put forward but likely SNP will be the only option for getting the tories out anyway, once again.
  I'm just tired and frustrated of doing this in every single election and having the rest of the UK shit the bed and vote Tory anyway. I've put a £100 bet on with a friend that the Tories will win again even though they're polling real low. I just have no faith in the electorate to do anything but vote against their own interests.

I just don't feel like this is the time. Tories out is the only measurable positive outcome that can be achieved at the next election. So I would advocate to vote for whatever is the most likely to help with that.
One the Tories are gone, the next target simply has to be proportional representation otherwise they will be back in 10 years or so. And the only way to achieve THAT is to organise!
- My stance has been Tories out since the Cameron and Clegg love affair, I have voted on that basis ever since. I'll likely vote SNP to get rid of them.
  Not to mention SNP are the loudest advocates for PR in the UK, even though they stand to lose the most from it (by far).
  
  I suspect that if either main party in England started to adopt PR policies they'd find a way to moderate their stance, exactly for the reason you describe. For example, that English votes don't apply.
  The SNP, on Westminster issues, have a very easy role to play because they are perpetual opposition. I agree with them on a lot, if not most, things they say, but as we saw with the gaza ceasefire amendment debacle, if they have an opportunity to paint Westminster and/or Labour in a negative light, they will take that route instead. It's a shame really.

Lol no matter what your stance is, not voting is the worst possible thing you can do.
- Every spoiled ballot has to be counted and reviewed, a spoiled ballot is a "this is a person that took the time to turn up to vote and we didn't manage to win them over."
  There is a massive difference between spoiling a ballot and just not voting.
  
  I don't think a spoiled ballot sends as strong a message as you think it does.
  
  They don't get counted at all. There is stats for spoiled ballots but that is every ballot that isn't counted in the election, so say someone ticked two boxes instead of one, or if they used a pencil and it got rubbed away before counting, they all go together and nothing happens with them.
- Not voting isn't doing.
- Spoiling your ballot is voting - that’s the point.
  
  But it’s voting for nobody. So it doesn’t actually count for anything. The only way it would, would be if “spoiled ballots” “wins” by having the most, then ever running MP in that constituency has to step down, be replaced by someone else and the election re-ran. But that will never ever happen so it’s futile to spoil imo.
- the worst possible thing you can do.
  lol, it really fucking isn't (and I can't even imagine being privileged enough, nor ignorant enough of how politics work, to even come up with that line)

I think it's better to vote for a party which has no chance of winning than to spoil your vote. At the very least it communicates what kinds of policies you would like to see and what policies would win your vote in the future.
I constantly think about the 2015 general election and how UKIP got almost 4 million votes (the third highest number of votes amongst all the parties). I feel that this caused a shift within the Conservative party towards populist, Eurosceptic, and anti-environmental ideals because they realised by doing so they could win back those 4 million voters.
I would personally never spoil my ballot for this reason. I don't think it's especially valuable to communicate that you're not happy with anything without communicating what would make you happy.
I'm currently in a circular debate with myself as to whether to vote Labour or Green. The classic eternal debate of "splitting the left vote" which we must deal with since we use an archaeic First-Past-The-Post system which should not exist in any modern democracy. I don't even especially like the Greens but a vote for them may communicate that one of my biggest values is preserving the environment and tackling climate change. Perhaps this could encourage Labour to establish policies to address these things in order to win back Green votes.

Absolutely not. I'll be voting for whoever has the best chance of keeping the Tories out of my constituency. That's probably the SNP, but if it's Labour I'll damn well vote Labour. I'd take a lack of identity over all this in a heartbeat.
- Witnessing Labour campaigning for the Tories sealed that decision for me for life. 100% fuck them, Red tory cunts.
  Lesser of 2 evils when it comes to Westminster. But I won't vote for them, and fortunately I'm in a constituency where Labour have never won, and have absolutely zero presence regardless. Their local branch building is essentially a shed.
  
  It's your vote to do with as you wish, obviously, but for so long as we're voting in an FPTP system then getting the lesser of two evils is the top priority. It's nice if that actually means voting for a party you are happy to vote for, but I'd even vote Tory if the alternative was a Reform government. Fortunately we're not in a situation that's quite as bad as that.

I don’t see the point really. Been having this conversation recently with someone who said the same. The problem is, while technically it’s counted as spoiled for the statistics, it’s effectively voting for no change. If you are unhappy with the state of things then you have to vote for the lesser of all evils imo. Voting tactically is what everyone who wants to spoil should do I think. Unless they are somewhat happy with the current situation and don’t want change ofc.
No party is perfect, and obviously it’s still a little early to tell as I will read the manifestos of all, except the conservatives this year as just their behaviour recently has been enough to tell them to get fucked.

A spoiled ballot is slightly better than not voting at all.
However, as frustrating as it is, it does little to help you or anyone's situation. We have to deal with this crappy voting system and basically hope that at some point there'll be an opportunity to change it.

Instead of spoiling it, vote for your local Monster Raving Luny party candidate and help get their deposit back. (Or any other niche party you like)
Otherwise - unless you were a student at the time (me 😭) wasn't the coalition a much better result than a full conservative government?
- I didn't vote Lib Dem to end up with the fucking tories, which is exactly what happened. I'm not surprised their support plummeted after that.
  I was a student at the time, but fortunately, I'm Scottish, so the student loans fiasco didn't apply.
  
  What did you expect then? They would never have got a majority, a coalition or vote trading is the best they could have hoped for.
  They didn't do as much as they had hoped, but probably still better than a Tory majority (for the apparent userbase here). The alternative would have been either a minority government or another election?
- Not really, the conservatives steam rollered the lib dems. Ultimately it was just a conservative agenda enabled by the lib dems.
  
  The lib Dems, unfortunately, relied on us votes being rational. They gave up most of their agenda to get a vote on changing away from FFTP. Unfortunately, enough people used it as a protest vote against them.
  
  There was compromise though, I can't remember exactly what it was, but I seem to remember them taking the crazy off the top of the conservative agenda and bringing them closer to centre?
  That was before I could vote though, so wasn't entirely paying enough attention.
  
  The lib dem bend-over can be summarised in two letters:
  AV

I only have anecdotal evidence but: spoiling your ballot is less effective than voting for a third party with a flagship policy you want one of the main parties to adopt.
And that's less effective than joining the membership of the party you want to influence and raising the issues from within.
And that has less impact for your life than getting involved in your local political activity.

When they are reading out the results they do say how many spoiled ballots there were, the problem is the BBC et el usually cut off just as that is being read and they don't count it across the country or keep the results and as the results start coming in faster you don't hear it. The spoiled ballots doesn't seem to make it into any of the official stats for an election that I can see. So unfortunately its one of those acts that ought to be better than not voting but in practice turns out to be basically the same.
I certainly wont be voting for the Conservatives or Labour but as far as protests go I am better off voting for another party that wont win as a protest than spoiling the ballot as it will be more visible and included in all the stats.
- My parents used to do election counting, they don't count spoiled ballots, they just get thrown away.
  
  I had heard the opposite from local counting volunteers. I was told that the MPs are told how many spoiled ballots there were as that is key analytics to knowing how many undecided voters they failed to win over.
  Maybe that's not the case anymore and a spoiled ballot doesn't have the same message.

After a boundary change a lot of people I know are now in one of the safest seats in the country, so their vote is pointless but most still get out and vote - some for the Greens (as the more votes they get, the clearer it is the system is broken) and I know one person who has been spoiling their vote for 50 years in a protest about something or other.
I'm in a previously Tory seat that's now solidly Labour and should stay that way in my lifetime but it doesn't pay to take your eye off the ball.
The worst thing is not voting, as the Tories will use voter apathy as an excuse to wriggle out of taking responsibility for their trouncing. So if you can't bring yourself to vote for anyone then spoiling your paper is better than not voting.

No, I'm voting to get the Tories out because fuck them and all the horses they rode in on.

This screams Russian interference.
No. Do not spoil your ballot. Vote as your conscious demands.
- Does it fuck. I am Scottish, not some Russian bot.
  The Russians already won when they convinced the plebs to vote for Brexit to separate the UK the EU as they planned.
  Indicating I would consider spoiling my ballot, then outlining detailed reasons as to why based on my local choices, should really tell you everything you need to know.
  
  the plebs
  O_o
  
  So stand up and run yourself, or spread the message of dissent. I think Labour are a lot better than the Tories, who are a total goon squad of moral and financial corruption. The SNP has wrecked many things in their pursuit of power but done little to actually help the country (Scotland). I saw the education system wrecked while I lived there. The police command concentrated in Glasgow was also ridiculous, instead of locally knowledgeable groups able to judge things for themselves.
- Is our shit government and shit opposition also a Russian plot?
  
  Well to be fair, I won’t be surprised if many Tories and Farrage’s circus are paid by Putin.

Would you rather there were only 2 parties to vote for? Things change, vote for who you want regardless of their chances of getting in. But FPTP definitely sucks.

snp + greens all the time :)

I wouldn't spoil my ballot personally unless I felt every party right now was actively bad. I think there are a few things you should consider:
Some of the parties aren't necessarily the same, policy-wise or values-wise, as they were in the past. They might have the same name as they did ten years ago, but that doesn't mean everything else about them is frozen in time. Parties evolve, and you should judge them as they are now and the direction they're heading in rather than holding vendettas against them for things that aren't representative of how they are now. This is particularly important when parties have new leadership and direction - Labour, in particular, feels like quite a different party to how it was in 2019. Is it better? In some ways yes, in other ways no, I think. But whether you think it's better or not, I think it's distinct enough, and tried to distance itself enough from what it perceived as issues it had in 2019, that holding it accountable still doesn't achieve much. I don't think it's fair to blame Ed Davey's Lib Dems for Nick Clegg's coalition either (although I do think Clegg did a reasonable job of moderating the Tories during that time - things got so much worse once the Tories got full power).
I also think it's important to think of every election as a stepping stone to the future, rather than hoping for perfection to happen overnight. Taking the Labour party as an example, because they're the biggest rivals to the Tories on a national level: do I think things will be perfect if Labour get power? No. They don't necessarily represent my views on some issues, and I actively disagree with them on others. In another voting system, they probably wouldn't be my first choice. But I also think that if Labour gets in, things will move in a better direction. If I think about where I'd like things to be in ten or twenty years, Labour winning this election is probably what ensures the best (or at least most realistic) chance of getting there.
Don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good". None of the options are perfect as far as I'm concerned. But Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and SNP are all good compared to the Tories, and doing what you can to help the one that gives the best chance of keeping the Tories out in your constituency is going to move things in a good direction. I think that having the chance to actually get rid of the Tories is not the time for apathy, also. I'd hate to see the Tories win again because the left gets complacent or apathetic, or starts splitting the vote because Starmer's Labour isn't perfect. Because do you know what else isn't perfect? Another five fucking years of Tory government. It looks like they're on their way out, but let's not fumble it at the finish line.
Get these right-wing ghouls out of power, and then write to your MP telling them how you'd like to see things change. Because chances are it'll achieve more than spoiling your ballot. Spoiling your ballot expresses that you're angry but it doesn't tell anyone why and it doesn't do anything to bring about change.
- I appreciate you taking the time to write all this up, though I am aware of all of it. I will vote SNP in a futile attempt to remove the Tories from my constituency, but Labour in Scotland are not the same as the rest of the Labour party. Their only identity here is "anti-SNP at all costs." Hell, a bunch of their councillors were suspended for creating a coalition council with the the Tories as well.
  They will always be the same party in Scotland, until they change their tact and start supporting progressive policies as opposed to "SNP are the devil and nothing else matters."
  Don't get me wrong, I'm not disillusioned to the fact that the SNP have many faults within their party. But they gave me free education, free prescriptions, and mitigate a lot of damage the Tories in Westminster try to force on the public. (Bedroom tax, as an example).
  Labour are just tory lite. And 2019 may seem like a long time ago, but bare in mind this was still 3 years post-brexit referendum. There was still a lot of anger, and openly trying to convince your own constituents to support the Tories (the party they are supposed to be the main opposition to) in that time is still a massive breach of trust, in my opinion.
  Hopefully a Labour Westminster government will happen, and will make positive changes, but considering Scotland only returned 6 of 59 seats as Tories in 2019, its not up here that needs convincing.
  
  The one thing that might be worth thinking about though is that labour have said that they are willing to look into an alternate voting system. I don't know if they've actually made it a commitment but they've made a lot of noises that sound like they really mean it.
  Although like you said they're basically guaranteed to get in anyway so you probably should just do what makes you feel good.
  Realistically though the only way we're going to get from where we are now to something approaching what everybody actually wants is if we change the voting system and if the only way to get that is with a labour government then I'm voting for them.

No need to spoil the ballot, if none of the people running represents you, you have the ability to vote none, which is what I'll be doing (with absolutely no expectation of it actually changing anything, just like a vote for any of the other parties won't change anything, because electoral politics is a charade designed by the powerful to make sure they stay in power, and playing their game will never gain us freedom, but it's literally the bare minimum)
- Okay sure but with the caveat literally anybody would be better than the Tories.
  At this point I would settle for competent cronyism, rather than the incompetent cronyism which is what we currently have.
- you have the ability to vote none
  That webpage does not describe a current ability to vote none. Instead it simply argues for a possible means of achieving a future ability to vote none. And to me it's a pretty feeble suggestion.
  What you've said is not true. One does not have the ability to vote none.

I usually do.
Green or Spoil is the only option for me and my local Greens are a weirdos so a spoil it will be.

I don't participate in elections.
- Why?
  
  Why would I?
  Edit: tumbleweed Yeah.

71 comments