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.
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.
The most realistic scenario to make that happen, if we’re talking purely hypotheticals, is a coalition government between libdems and labs, where the former demands RCV as a concession.
Is it currently likely? No, but it’s definitely something you could read in a history book and it wouldn’t make you fall out of your chair.
I’m not so sure though. The reason that labour are winning is not because of anything they’ve done, and everything because of what the Tories have done. They know that, they also know that the public have very short memories and they may very well decide in 2025 that they should give the Tories another go. Now of course it all depends on what ends up happening in the next 5 years which of course is something that cannot be predicted but it’s certainly a possibility they will have to think about.
They know the public want a different voting system so it may very well be a good vote winner while at the same time the alternate system would basically ensure that the extreme hard right Tories (Which at this point is basically the whole party) would never get into power again. It could kill two birds with one stone.
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.
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.
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.
I think that’s a myth.
If spoiled ballots “win” nothing happens and the person with the most votes is elected anyway.
There’s no way to tell the difference between accidentally spoiling a ballot and a protest vote, so they just don’t mean anything.
If you’re hoping that politicians will feel enough shame to step down if no one votes for them, then I’d like to introduce you to our last two prime ministers.
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.
