A question about spoiling your vote / Facebook conspiracy?

Hey all..

As i'm sure most of you now know there's an election around the corner.

news.bbc.co.uk...

Are you also aware of this facebook group?

Don't vote: spoil your ballot paper in the 2010 UK General Election

Okay some one explain what this would mean, what would occur and why?

Would this leave to a hung parliament? What would that mean for us?


[edit on 6-4-2010 by mr-lizard]

edit: title.

[edit on 6-4-2010 by mr-lizard]

Originally posted by mr-lizard

Don't vote: spoil your ballot paper in the 2010 UK General Election

Okay some one explain what this would mean, what would occur and why?

Would this leave to a hung parliament? What would that mean for us?

[edit on 6-4-2010 by mr-lizard]

To be honest, it would have exactly the same effect as not voting.

You are supposed to mark the ballot paper only with an "x". If you add any other writing, the paper is regarded as "spoiled" and left out of the voting totals. That is all. If you write a subversive message of some kind, it might be seen by one counter, who won't have much time to look at it. It certainly wouldn't make a hung parliament more likely or less likely.

To rephrase what i mean ...

If this facebook idea of a mass spoiling of votes occurs... What ever figure that may be... what would happen if hundreds of thousands of people actually spoiled their vote?

Cannot see that many spoiling there vote. Uk people are just ipod carrying go along with the xcrowd people like americans.

Originally posted by mr-lizard


If this facebook idea of a mass spoiling of votes occurs... What ever figure that may be... what would happen if hundreds of thousands of people actually spoiled their vote?

The election results would then be decided by the small group of people who did not spoil their vote. If they all tended to favour the same party, that party would have a clear majority.

I have often wondered if John Major won his post-Thatcher election precisely because many people who would have voted against him had deliberately taken themselves off the register. Whatever this facebook group are trying to achieve, the actual result might be handing the election to Cameron.

Actually, thinking about that...maybe I should keep my mouth shut and let them do it.

[edit on 6-4-2010 by DISRAELI]

New Labours goons may have set up that page IMO-They do not want people to "protest vote" by voting cons or libs,and this ballot spoiling could actually work in their favour,rather than lots of people voting for another party.

Remember last time when hardly any percent of the population voted for them,but they still got in because of very low turn out across the board?

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


This could very well be true.

In fact the very reason i started this thread was because i considered how easily a social networking site can be used to 'sway' the masses with such groups.

Remember the rage against the machine thing? That was because people were pissed off at the fact that one person was controlling the charts... So the 'people' got someone else into the number one position with a non-costly avenue of media manipulation.

Badumsh...

I think if a truly massive amount of people spoil their votes there will be an obvious talking point - they will tally up how many votes were spoiled and then if the vote was close some people may be able to point to an exceptionally high level of spoilt votes as some sort of vote rigging.

Having a facebook try to achieve this could work... Apart from the fact that it will be a little clear who and why the spoilt votes came from