Best ballot paper

[ewx]

Best ballot paper, as described by one of Cambridge's independent candidates:

Counting took a long time partly because the spoilt ballot papers of each ward were examined painstakingly ward by ward - I did get the best paper though - entries of unhappy faces in each box except mine which had a smiley face, universally judged to be the best paper :o)

Comments

[ali-in-london.livejournal.com]

One the one hand, that's kind of cute.

On the other, it's kind of sad and a bit worrying. My assumption is that the smiley-face voter was actually expressing a preference (otherwise they would have put unhappy faces in all boxes), and I'd worry that that person did genuinely think that this vote would count. Makes me wonder how many other people either failed to read the instructions or decided that their little bit of originality would be OK.

Would be interesting to see stats on how often this kind of thing turns up (not necessarily smiley faces, but people expressing a preference for a candidate but not actually voting correctly) and whether it happens more or less for people supporting independent candidates (assumption 1: people voting for independents would be more likely to be "free thinkers" and be more creative, assumption 2: people voting for independents in protest this time around would be less familiar with the voting process).

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

I wonder why you can get the cam.* groups on Google Groups, when you can't get the ox.* groups?

Are there separate cam.* and ucam.* hierarchies, the latter of which is university-only and private?

[ex-lark-asc.livejournal.com]

Yes. :-)

[gerald_duck]

I thought the actual test for whether a not a ballot paper was considered spoiled was to decide if the voter had indicated a clear preference. But they don't tell people this, because it would only encourage borderline behaviour.

A line of frownies with one smiley is a preference; might it even be considered a clear preference?

(Probably not at 5am, when all concerned are fed up and want to go home.)

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Yes. I'm surprised that it was considered spoilt, to be honest. Worthy of especial thinking, perhaps, but no worse than that.

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Given Graham says he "did get" it I'm not sure it was considered spoilt in the end (and from his description I'd personally think it should have been considered clear).

[ali-in-london.livejournal.com]

Ahh, when I read the article the first time around I thought that the smiley ballot paper was being grouped in the set of spoiled ballot papers, and so the "best paper" meant the best out of the painstakingly examined spoiled ballot papers, rather than the best out of all the papers.

[bopeepsheep.livejournal.com]

cam.misc is (well, it used to be, but definitely is not these days) equivalent to alt.oxford.talk, rather than to any of the ox.* groups. a.o.t. is AFAIK effectively dead now, although it went through a lively phase for a couple of years c.2000. I don't know why there should be such a difference between the two - plenty of people elsewhere on Usenet seem to be Oxford residents, they just don't have much to say about the place.

[imc.livejournal.com]

Possibly one or both of (a) same reason no one posts to ox.* or oxbridge.* any more, and (b) alt groups are not as hip as other kinds (for one thing, it expires off news.ox.ac.uk in about two days).

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

Ah, good, thanks for pointing that out. (-: