On Wed, 21 Apr 2021 12:22:06 +0100, Robin wrote:

On 21/04/2021 12:01, John Rumm wrote:
On 20/04/2021 20:17, T i m wrote:

With the upcoming local elections I had planned to spoil my paper [1]

I have never really understood why people do that[1] Is it the belief
that it sends some kind of message?


It may send a message.

Quite and they are counted so have a tangible 'value' as such (even
though the number may be very low in most cases). Now, if *enough*
people understood that that was a formal option and did the same
*maybe* the system could be changed to better reflect what the very
people it was supposed to represent might want?

First, it is a traditional way of protesting the
system/candidate/whatever but patently a bit vague.

Yup, because (I'm told) 'they' don't want to 'encourage giving the
people an opportunity to indicate a dissatisfaction with the system or
options as presented. What if the ~50% who don't even bother to turn
up are dissatisfied with the status quo but feel no point in going and
playing along because it just suggests a pro-active support for it?

Second, and more important, the papers have to be shown to the
candidates for them to agree they should not be counted so a message
written on them (preferably in bold marker) /may/ get through.

Q. Ignoring the 'it's what we have' answer, what percentage of the
electorate do you think have any real understanding or put any real
effort into deciding what to vote (at any level)?

If the turnout was normally around 100% I might imagine the electorate
actually had an opinion on any / all of it but it never is.

Then you have the tribalists who only ever vote one way, leaving the
actual decision to those who are the most opinionated or a coin toss
(the floating voters).

I asked this question in this thread because I *do* care about
democracy and that starts with the very people who have *put
themselves up* to represent us.

Maybe it should be more like when they vote for people who gave given
most for the community doing say voluntary work? Chances are they
wouldn't want it, because they only want to do good things, not 'play
politics'? ;-(

Cheers, T i m