jack

I managed to vote. (About 8.30 -- I felt very organised :))

I wasn't positive, but I felt even "not one of the awful parties" was a better heuristic than most people would use, so I went with my best guess (both independents)

Is spoiling your ballot superior to not turning up? My instinct says very much yes -- a ballot with 100% turnout and 100% spoiled ballots is a clearer protest than 0% turnout, since the latter might just be apathy. But it's also true that many people will judge purely by the turnout and not the results, or attribute all spoiled ballots to incompetence.

I was interested to observe the process. I virtuously filed my polling card in my "electoral reg" file, and found it instantly on polling morning, so a big win for organisation there: usually I'd have it, but it'd be sitting on my "urgent stuff" pile between when I received it and when I used it.

Unfortunately, it seemed the postman had exchanged poll cards with my neighbour and neither of us noticed until it was too late. So I felt a little silly, but I was very glad I didn't need it to vote, else I likely wouldn't have been able to, or only if I went through some additional faff. I don't know if I'd have managed to check sooner if I'd known it was necessary: maybe, but it made me appreciate how easy it is for a small mistake to deny someone the right to vote if the government cracks down. Especially if the government has a plausible excuse for cracking down in some areas and not others: that's blatant election rigging.

On the other hand, I was surprised that you really do only need to give your name and address to vote. It works surprisingly well considering, and I guess if you tried to vote for someone else, they'd notice when the real one came in, although at that point there's presumably no way of recovering the first ballot paper? But if you know someone's not voting, it seems there's nothing really stopping you claiming to be them.

And recording who's voted is itself a potential security flaw: voting is private, traditionally to prevent people being manipulated into voting for someone. But if you were in a position to intimidate someone into voting for who you wanted, you could do half as well by telling them not to vote, and it seems fairly easy to spot who has and who hasn't.