Quote:
Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
This spoiled ballot thing comes up every time, but I don't think I've ever heard a single report on the news about it. People seem to think it's a big statement, but really, nobody is going to hear it. Some flunky at Elections Canada will put your vote in an envelope and maybe write down how many they had. They will then disappear forever. Nobody will ever see it again and maybe 1 person will know how many spoiled ballots there were in that one box and it will never be heard from or even thought of again.
I worked an election once and that's what we did. Some of the spoiled ballots had messages that appeared to be addressed right to the candidate. Believe me, they aren't going to see it or even know about it.
If you want to spoil a ballot because you don't want to vote for any of them I don't know why you'd even bother voting. It does nothing. Nobody knows. Voter apathy (ie not voting) will get more attention and send a bigger message than spoiled ballots.
It would be the same for rejected ballots too. The only person who knows is the person you rejected it from.
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I remember something about how when the province held their first (unofficial) senate election, there was an extremely high number of spoiled ballots. Is it different for those types of elections than for actual federal elections?
I'd be curious to see what sort of change in voting would occur if there was a 'no vote' option on the card. I think the number of votes for actual candidates might go down slightly (particularly for fringe protest parties), but actual voting would go up significantly. In an election such as the current one, I bet that a lot of people who stay home would instead go out to register their disgust. Of course, the next question would be, what good would it serve to have a whole bunch of people cast votes simply to say that they aren't happy about the whole process?