UK Politics

No, I'm voting to get the Tories out because fuck them and all the horses they rode in on.

snp + greens all the time :)

I only have anecdotal evidence but: spoiling your ballot is less effective than voting for a third party with a flagship policy you want one of the main parties to adopt.

And that's less effective than joining the membership of the party you want to influence and raising the issues from within.

And that has less impact for your life than getting involved in your local political activity.

Would you rather there were only 2 parties to vote for? Things change, vote for who you want regardless of their chances of getting in. But FPTP definitely sucks.

I don't participate in elections.

When they are reading out the results they do say how many spoiled ballots there were, the problem is the BBC et el usually cut off just as that is being read and they don't count it across the country or keep the results and as the results start coming in faster you don't hear it. The spoiled ballots doesn't seem to make it into any of the official stats for an election that I can see. So unfortunately its one of those acts that ought to be better than not voting but in practice turns out to be basically the same.

I certainly wont be voting for the Conservatives or Labour but as far as protests go I am better off voting for another party that wont win as a protest than spoiling the ballot as it will be more visible and included in all the stats.

I wouldn't spoil my ballot personally unless I felt every party right now was actively bad. I think there are a few things you should consider:

Some of the parties aren't necessarily the same, policy-wise or values-wise, as they were in the past. They might have the same name as they did ten years ago, but that doesn't mean everything else about them is frozen in time. Parties evolve, and you should judge them as they are now and the direction they're heading in rather than holding vendettas against them for things that aren't representative of how they are now. This is particularly important when parties have new leadership and direction - Labour, in particular, feels like quite a different party to how it was in 2019. Is it better? In some ways yes, in other ways no, I think. But whether you think it's better or not, I think it's distinct enough, and tried to distance itself enough from what it perceived as issues it had in 2019, that holding it accountable still doesn't achieve much. I don't think it's fair to blame Ed Davey's Lib Dems for Nick Clegg's coalition either (although I do think Clegg did a reasonable job of moderating the Tories during that time - things got so much worse once the Tories got full power).

I also think it's important to think of every election as a stepping stone to the future, rather than hoping for perfection to happen overnight. Taking the Labour party as an example, because they're the biggest rivals to the Tories on a national level: do I think things will be perfect if Labour get power? No. They don't necessarily represent my views on some issues, and I actively disagree with them on others. In another voting system, they probably wouldn't be my first choice. But I also think that if Labour gets in, things will move in a better direction. If I think about where I'd like things to be in ten or twenty years, Labour winning this election is probably what ensures the best (or at least most realistic) chance of getting there.

Don't let "perfect" be the enemy of "good". None of the options are perfect as far as I'm concerned. But Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and SNP are all good compared to the Tories, and doing what you can to help the one that gives the best chance of keeping the Tories out in your constituency is going to move things in a good direction. I think that having the chance to actually get rid of the Tories is not the time for apathy, also. I'd hate to see the Tories win again because the left gets complacent or apathetic, or starts splitting the vote because Starmer's Labour isn't perfect. Because do you know what else isn't perfect? Another five fucking years of Tory government. It looks like they're on their way out, but let's not fumble it at the finish line.

Get these right-wing ghouls out of power, and then write to your MP telling them how you'd like to see things change. Because chances are it'll achieve more than spoiling your ballot. Spoiling your ballot expresses that you're angry but it doesn't tell anyone why and it doesn't do anything to bring about change.

No need to spoil the ballot, if none of the people running represents you, you have the ability to vote none, which is what I'll be doing (with absolutely no expectation of it actually changing anything, just like a vote for any of the other parties won't change anything, because electoral politics is a charade designed by the powerful to make sure they stay in power, and playing their game will never gain us freedom, but it's literally the bare minimum)

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.

This screams Russian interference.

No. Do not spoil your ballot. Vote as your conscious demands.

A spoiled ballot is slightly better than not voting at all.

However, as frustrating as it is, it does little to help you or anyone's situation. We have to deal with this crappy voting system and basically hope that at some point there'll be an opportunity to change it.

After a boundary change a lot of people I know are now in one of the safest seats in the country, so their vote is pointless but most still get out and vote - some for the Greens (as the more votes they get, the clearer it is the system is broken) and I know one person who has been spoiling their vote for 50 years in a protest about something or other.

I'm in a previously Tory seat that's now solidly Labour and should stay that way in my lifetime but it doesn't pay to take your eye off the ball.

The worst thing is not voting, as the Tories will use voter apathy as an excuse to wriggle out of taking responsibility for their trouncing. So if you can't bring yourself to vote for anyone then spoiling your paper is better than not voting.

Absolutely not. I'll be voting for whoever has the best chance of keeping the Tories out of my constituency. That's probably the SNP, but if it's Labour I'll damn well vote Labour. I'd take a lack of identity over all this in a heartbeat.