Should spoilt ballots be included in turnout figures?

[gwynthegriff]

Jan 27, 2018 18:21:17 GMT @benjl said:

Jan 27, 2018 18:17:09 GMT gwynthegriff said:

I think not.

Rubbers and polling stations should be kept well apart!

There is a perfectly acceptable (and widely accepted) procedure if you accidentally complete your ballot paper incorrectly.

Return to the polling officer and explain your problem; they will then issue a replacement (clean) ballot paper.

Alternatively, if you "cross out" your cross and insert a clear cross in the correct place it will (in every circumstance I have ever encountered) be regarded as a valid vote.

I did not know this, thank you for informing me. I was presented with a non-problem it seems. If an elector doesn’t know the procedure then greater education is needed, not the returning officer second guessing spoilt ballots.

At pretty well every count I've ever attended (and that's quite a high number) there have been examples where it would appear that somebody had made such an error. If the voter's intention was clear then the vote was counted. At the discretion and final decision of the RO (or their representative) but subject to the views - sometimes strongly expressed - by the candidates' agents.

[greatkingrat]

Lets say there are two voters (lets call them Mr and Mrs Schrodinger) who both attend the polling station and complete a ballot paper. Once the box is opened, it is found one vote is valid, and the other is spoilt. Has Mr Schrodinger turned out? Has Mrs Schrodinger turned out? As the ballot is secret, have they both turned out and not turned out at the same time?

[Foggy]

Jan 27, 2018 19:20:59 GMT greatkingrat said:

Lets say there are two voters (lets call them Mr and Mrs Schrödinger) who both attend the polling station and complete a ballot paper. Once the box is opened, it is found one vote is valid, and the other is spoilt. Has Mr Schrödinger turned out? Has Mrs Schrödinger turned out? As the ballot is secret, have they both turned out and not turned out at the same time?

My thinking was along these lines too, with all the references to physically turning out. The first time I voted, I went to the polling station and cast a valid vote for the Parish Council but deliberately spoilt my ballot paper in the District Council contest. 

According to the criteria advocated by @benjl, did I both turn out and fail to turn out simultaneously, in the same place? 

[greenchristian]

Jan 27, 2018 18:14:45 GMT @benjl said:

Jan 27, 2018 16:14:55 GMT yellowperil said:

re rubbers in polling booths: Not a solution, I think. A ballot paper where a vote had been rubbed out might still be counted as spoilt if any mark whatsoever remained, and quite right too. And just start to consider the implications if it became commonplace for ballot papers to have one vote rubbed out and replaced by another. It just doesn't bear thinking about.

It depends on the quality of the rubber. This is really a side issue of no importance.

Yes it is a side issue. No it is not "of no importance", because providing a means to remove marks from the ballot paper within the polling station calls the integrity of the whole process into question. Especially if its use becomes commonplace.

In all cases I defer to the returning officers discretion as to whether the ballot is valid and can be counted as a vote for a candidate.

So, in your view, whether somebody has turned out to vote is a matter for the returning officer to decide, and the intent of the (alleged) voter is a side issue of no importance?

[CatholicLeft]

Jan 27, 2018 16:10:13 GMT @benjl said:

Jan 27, 2018 14:39:16 GMT CatholicLeft said:

This undermines those who go to the effort of expressing their unhappiness in the choice offered, be it in person or by post. If you argue that the only validation of a view is if you use it to put your mark next to the choices offered, then you are suggesting that the power lies with those who print the ballot paper, not those who cast a ballot. The ballot paper may have valid choices in a democracy, or not in an authoritarian regime. The system may well not annouce the spoilt ballots, but the system is only a process. The process is the servant of democracy, not the master of it.

I am in favour of a none of the above option, as previously stated. But that does not exist at the minute, however much you want it to or believe the current system undermines voters. As the American right say, ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’.

Your facts are opinions. I cast an invalid ballot, but it was indeed a ballot cast.

[Jack]

This thread:

[Foggy]

I see your Average White Band and raise you an above average white woman:



But yeah, the last couple of pages are full of circular arguments. 

[IceAgeComing]

I know that this is an extreme case but its at least different to the circular examples from earlier on in this thread - and hell, its happened in recent history in UK elections.

I go to vote in my polling station. Later on after I've voted perfectly correctly someone comes into the polling station with a weapon and decides to start attacking the ballot box and before they are arrested my ballot paper is damaged, with the section with the official mark on it being torn off which means that my vote won't be counted. Have I turned out to vote?

(To explain when: the 2007 Scottish Parliament election in a polling station in Edinburgh: they had the new ballot paper with both votes on the one paper and computer counting; but because staff had to spend a long time trying to stick damaged papers back together again they wouldn't go through the machine properly; and combining the fact that they'd not done a great job explaining the new paper to people and took the instructions off because they wouldn't have fit on the max size of paper available it led to like 7% of votes cast being spoiled across Scotland.)

[tonyhill]

All right, if we are going to carry on with obscure examples: in 1971, faced with the choice of Labour and Conservative, I drew a smiley face against the Labour candidate and a sad one against the Tory (this was a long time before acid house and emojis!) I wasn't at the count so I don't know how the ballot paper was treated, and when I did it I wasn't even sure whether I wanted to cast a vote for Labour - so basically I left the decision on whether I had done to the Returning Officer.

[johnhemming]

A smile against one candidate should be counted as a vote for that candidate.
www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/87699/UKPE-doubtfuls-booklet.pdf (see page 20)

An issue I have had with referenda arises from the mayoral referendum (which was in a number of cities at the same time as well as Birmingham). People who wrote "yes" on the ballot paper had their vote counted, those who wrote "no" didn't. They were treated as spoilt ballots.

I did try to cause a fuss about this, but I don't know where this has gone legally.

There were about 5,000 votes in Birmingham and they should count as part of turnout.

[Pete Whitehead]

Jan 28, 2018 9:58:43 GMT johnhemming said:

A smile against one candidate should be counted as a vote for that candidate.
www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/87699/UKPE-doubtfuls-booklet.pdf (see page 20)

Was that the position in 1970 though? I thought they were a lot more strict previously to the extent that even a tick in the box instead of a cross would be rejected?

[tonyhill]

My recollection is that at that time the interpretation of "a mark by which an elector might be identified" was not confined to writing your polling number or name on the ballot paper, and that as Pete suggests many returning officers would be quite rigid in their decisions. I don't think I have ever seen a paper rejected for a tick though: scrutineers who have never been to a count before often waste time pointing ticks out as being invalid and have to have it explained to them that actually they are fine because the voter's intention is clear.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

In principle, any mark that's distinctive and not generic should be enough to invalidate a ballot paper. The principle is that a voter may have sold their vote and agreed to put a particular mark on it so that it was proved they had delivered on their part of the bargain. A smiley face or a tick could have been done accidentally, but anything else might not be accidental.

[tonyhill]

In principle David is quite correct, but when I have tried to make that point in the past (I no longer bother) the returning officer has disregarded the argument. It is the sort of thing that I imagine varies widely depending upon the interpretation of individual returning officers.

[yellowperil]

Jan 28, 2018 8:45:59 GMT tonyhill said:

All right, if we are going to carry on with obscure examples: in 1971, faced with the choice of Labour and Conservative, I drew a smiley face against the Labour candidate and a sad one against the Tory (this was a long time before acid house and emojis!) I wasn't at the count so I don't know how the ballot paper was treated, and when I did it I wasn't even sure whether I wanted to cast a vote for Labour - so basically I left the decision on whether I had done to the Returning Officer.

Actually that is an interesting question. A smiley alone is clearly a good vote but  two faces which have to be interpreted as happy and sad is a difficult area where I think a lot of ROs might claim there were two votes cast, its a bit like one tick and one cross, which should be rejected.

[tonyhill]

Except that a tick is generally recognised as being a positive indicator and a cross is the generally accepted way of casting a vote, so that there is a clear conflict with regard to how the voter's intention should be interpreted.

[yellowperil]

Jan 28, 2018 14:07:36 GMT tonyhill said:

Except that a tick is generally recognised as being a positive indicator and a cross is the generally accepted way of casting a vote, so that there is a clear conflict with regard to how the voter's intention should be interpreted.

Yes I understand that which makes that particular example even more difficult, but each of these emojis will be hand drawn and what is a sad face and what is a happy face may be a matter of opinion.

[neilm]

We already have 'valid votes' so it's reasonable to count them as a percentage of total ballots cast (many ROs present results in this fashion anyway) with the total turnout figure as valid votes + spoils. I can't see why this is a problem or why some people have such a bee in their bonnet about it.

[Andrew_S]

Jan 31, 2018 2:19:06 GMT neilm said:

We already have 'valid votes' so it's reasonable to count them as a percentage of total ballots cast (many ROs present results in this fashion anyway) with the total turnout figure as valid votes + spoils. I can't see why this is a problem or why some people have such a bee in their bonnet about it.

It would mess up comparisons with past elections because traditionally reference books, election results compilers, etc, haven't included them in this country. For example the Times Guide to the HoC has never had any information on spoilt papers. On the other hand I've noticed that most local councils do include them in their turnout figures when I've been inputting local election results into spreadsheets.

[swanarcadian]

Jan 31, 2018 5:04:36 GMT Andrew_S said:

Jan 31, 2018 2:19:06 GMT neilm said:

We already have 'valid votes' so it's reasonable to count them as a percentage of total ballots cast (many ROs present results in this fashion anyway) with the total turnout figure as valid votes + spoils. I can't see why this is a problem or why some people have such a bee in their bonnet about it.

It would mess up comparisons with past elections because traditionally reference books, election results compilers, etc, haven't included them in this country. For example the Times Guide to the HoC has never had any information on spoilt papers. On the other hand I've noticed that most local councils do include them in their turnout figures when I've been inputting local election results into spreadsheets.

This.  There are conventions in the recording of election results and we tend to stick to them for the sake of consistency and comparisons. 

Another example is listings of opinion poll results: almost anywhere you look, the column headings will say Con, Lab, LD in that order, regardless of whether the Conservatives spend over a decade behind (as we did almost uninterrupted between 1992 and 2003) or a party like UKIP comes along and outpolls the Lib Dems for a while.