Opinion: Would farmers vote ‘none of the above’?
© Adobe Stock Elections are in the news. In India, nearly a billion people are engaged in a lengthy voting process.
Earlier this year the Russians re-elected President Putin, and in November the US will choose its next president.
As I write, parts of this country have local elections coming up. I am wondering if the usual woefully low turnout will be boosted by people using their votes to pass judgement on central government.
Pundits will no doubt pick through the entrails to tell us what the results mean for the general election later this year.
About the author
Because not everyone in the world has a vote, or a genuine choice of candidate, or can vote in safety, I don’t take my right to vote lightly.
I give a lot of thought to how I will use it, so I am perturbed that as the general election draws near I find the policies being outlined by all parties either uninspiring or alarming.
I will be giving particular attention to pledges that affect farming and the countryside, but I fully appreciate that just as there is unlikely to be any single issue that pushes me to vote one way or the other, farmers will be at least as concerned about the NHS, housing or other major issues as they are about support for agriculture.
If I still do not know which way to vote come election day, what then? Not voting feels wrong, but what are the alternatives?
In Russia, faced with a “choice” between Putin and candidates with no credibility, crowds massed outside polling stations to show their dissent.
After Labour withdrew support for its candidate in Rochdale, there were suggestions that electors might “spoil” their ballot papers to indicate opposition to George Galloway.
In one of the US primaries, where “none of the above” was an option, it received more votes than a prominent candidate.
In the past I have been an election official, my role being to adjudicate on “doubtful” ballot papers.
When the voter’s intention was not clear, the paper would be referred to me to decide if it was a valid vote for any of the candidates.
I had previously assumed that voters either put an X in the box next to their chosen candidate, as I did, or simply did not go to the polling station.
Clearly, I lacked imagination. Instead of an X, some voters put a tick, or a smiley face, or a rude word, or something else in the box. (Crude drawings of male genitalia were a surprisingly popular choice).
Some wrote short essays on their ballot papers bemoaning the inadequacies of political parties.
Others added a line with “none of the above” and put their X next to that, or struck through the list of candidates altogether. Many papers were unmarked.
A “spoilt” ballot is not a meaningful protest because the thoughtful comments, the crude drawings and the blank papers are lumped together in the election statistics.
Nor can we tell if a low turnout is due to apathy or to positive decisions not to vote. “None of the above” should be an option on all ballot papers.
Choosing that would unambiguously let politicians know when people do not like their manifestoes, and would be much harder for them to ignore.