Walking to the polling booth on 5th May 2016, I am filled with overwhelming excitement. The wheel of democracy is about to make another revolution, and, for the first time, I can participate.
My political ‘involvement’ has, up until this moment, been from the sidelines, indeed what ex-Speaker John Bercow might describe as a ‘sedentary position’. From my first memorable glimpse of politics – Cameron, Clegg and Brown facing off behind their podiums, to present – my first election, London Mayor, I have been looking forward to casting my vote.
When I was younger, the polling station was some sort of glitzy, exclusive members’ club – over 18s only. My reality, however, is a rather grotty church hall filled with makeshift booths and a smell of damp which permeates every corner.
Nonetheless, am proud to put my check on the paper, put my ballot in the box, and walk out feeling accomplished.
I cannot help but notice, though, the small group of casually dressed men who are speaking at the top of their voices, laughing in fact, sat on the wall and smoking outside the polling station.
“I just wrote Brexit all over the paper,” one quipped, “That’s all I want anyway.”
Of course, the notion of spoilt ballots is one which is not unfamiliar to me. But for a plucky, 18-year-old first time voter, I thought it to be some form of urban legend – as real as the Loch Ness Monster or the Tooth Fairy. Sure, I told myself, it might happen somewhere, but not on my front door step.
However, as I later discovered – partly through my politics studies at school, and partly through the school of hard knocks, the political process is an iceberg – far more complicated beneath the surface. And the occurrence of spoilt ballots is one as deeply entrenched within the democratic process as voting itself.
In the 2015 General Election, shortly prior to my own passage into the British political system, the total of ‘rejected’ or ‘spoilt’ ballots across the UK was over 100,000. This, according to protest vote organisation Vote None, is equivalent to the votes for 3 or 4 MPs, given most are elected on 18-28,000 votes.
Whilst you do not have to search far for dissatisfaction in our democracy, the fringes who choose to spoil appear to rise up, in one voice every election cycle, with a loud chorus: ‘A spoilt ballot is better than no ballot at all!’
With the next General Election drawing ever closer by the day, I decided to undertake further investigation into spoilt ballots. My results were surprising, unveiling the depth and breadth of democratic abstaining, and of course, a noticeable pattern in the data.
What you will immediately find when researching into spoilt ballots is that there are a variety of forms of so-called ‘spoiling’, some of which can be quite surprising.
First up is something called ‘want of an official mark’. On each ballot paper, there is an official mark said to be an important tool in preventing electoral fraud. Every year, hundreds of people, or at its peak, 1,355 in 2015, seem to aim to purposefully circumvent the electoral system – mocking up their own ballots – presumably to attempt to swing the count in their preferred candidate’s favour.
‘Voting for more than one candidate’ also counts as spoiling too, and, as you might guess, this occurs predominantly when people fail to understand the voting system or become confused in the polling booth. But of course, it can also be undertaken by intentional spoilers. The annoyance is that we can never truly know.
Then there is ‘writing or mark by which the voter may be identified’. In what I imagine is a demographic that is part jokester, part politically obtuse, thousands of people put their name on the ballot paper every year. This isn’t a school homework assignment – although the responsibility can often feel like one – and should be avoided at all costs.
Finally, there comes ‘unmarked or void for uncertainty’. The Electoral Commission states that even if the ballot is incorrectly marked, but the voter’s intention is clear, then the ballot still counts. As a result, this may lead us to believe that this category, which provides us with the higher numbers, is the one into which protest voting, intentionally spoiling the ballot, seems to fall.
It seems logical to look at the average number of spoilt ballots per constituency, data which generally shines a light across the UK. Casting our analysis back some 55 years enables us to view the changing picture of British democracy, abstaining and voter error.
From 1964 to 1992, the average number of spoilt ballots per constituency was 66. This is the case, if we remove 1979, which Parliament.UK described as an unprecedented year of confusion in British democracy, when the general election coincided with local election and many voters received two ballot papers.
However, contrasting this with data from 1997 to 2017, the average number of spoilt ballots per constituency sky-rocketed to 136.
This means that in the last 22 years, or to put it another way, my entire lifetime, the average number of spoilt ballots per constituency (and therefore the percentage of total ballots) across the country has more than doubled, now in treble figures.
Of course, there are various symptoms that this kind of voter behaviour could be attributed to. But, what is as clear as day, is we will probably never be able to pin down the specific reasons why. Can we put it down to a poor political education system? An increasing dissatisfaction with democracy? Or simply just an increasingly warped sense of humour?
The truth is, that focusing on spoilt ballots – if we are to consider everything the government does – is simply too wide of a data set.
With that in mind, I chose to zero in on the ‘unmarked or void for uncertainty’ – which seems to be a purposefully spoiled ballot.
As noted above, numbers steadily rose between 1964 and 1992, then suffering a staggering increase in 1997, and remaining relatively consistent within the last 22 years. 50 years ago is within the living memory of a significant part of the population, so what has changed?
Many people would say that the current democratic process as it stands is the reason why the number of spoilt ballots has increased. But how can this be remedied?
A potentially viable solution, and one which has enticed many supporters from the everyman to the famous, has been presented by Jamie Stanley, campaign founder of None of the Above UK, a group which seeks to put a ‘none of the above’ option on the ballot. I spoke to him about spoilt ballots, and why the ‘none of the above’ option could solve the political conundrum of spoilt ballots.
“Everyone is free to spoil their ballot. I know lots of people that do. But it doesn’t really count for anything – and that’s the crucial point,” he said, “You really need an option that counts. Because they are all lumped in as potentially spoilt in error. And because there’s no way of analysing who has something to say or who is just trying to anarchically wreck the whole process. There are so many variables that just spoiling a ballot paper doesn’t address.”
Whilst spoilt ballot data does not always provide clarity with regards to intention, accompanying the figures with real life scenarios, such as the snowballing desire for a NOTA option, demonstrates there is a clear dissatisfaction with the current political process. As the number of people spoiling their ballot rises, so too does the need to address the causes of their spoiling in the first place. And a final conclusion to be drawn is that this is not solely the responsibility of the executive, but the civic duty of all politicians and the politically active.
Image: Ungry Young Man/Wikimedia Commons
