The Spoils of War

Some 140,000 ballot papers were spoiled in the hotly contested Scottish Parliamentary and local council elections on May 3rd. Frequently, the number of spoiled papers in a constituency exceeded the number of votes a candidate won the seat by. As much as 10% of the electorate were (after a fashion) disenfranchised, and the Scottish National Party won by a single seat.

I must admit: I couldn't care less about the majority of these people.

Now, fair enough. The electronic vote-counting system is no good. I think some people lost votes because the system couldn't understand some different forms of the numbers one, four and seven, and as ever the postal vote was a waste of everyone's time (why there has been no appreciable change in how these are dealt with after those Muslim councillors in England were voted in through the use of a little factory ran by the Asian community that processed dodgy postal votes is beyond me).

However, the overwhelming majority of spoiled votes were spoiled because people were stupid. Despite the attempts of the newspapers to make it look as though it was all very complicated and filling in two forms on the same day was a "recipe for disaster", I was there, and let me assure you, it was pretty damn simple.

First Form: Scottish Parliament

There are two little lists. In the first you are voting for your constituency MSP. Put a cross next to the name of the fellow you want. In the second your vote counts towards regional seats. Put a cross next to the name of the party you like best, or think deserves some representation.

Second Form: Your local council

There is a list of candidates. Write numbers next to their names in order of who you like best. If you only like two, you only have to put numbers next to two.

And this was all spelled out pretty clearly at the top of these forms. Voters weren't being asked to wrestle with quadratic equations. It took me somewhere in the region of ten seconds to fill out my votes--it was actually kind've dissapointing for me, as a first timer ("I'm paricipating in the democratic process! Woo!").

As callous as it may sound, my view is that if you managed to screw up your vote then you didn't deserve it, and are almost certainly clueless as to what your vote represented anyway.