who only by moving can balance

There's a widely misreported -- or at least misleadingly reported -- high-profile news story about last week's UK elections, in which a Tory ended up winning by a single vote... that consisted of a ballot that was not traditionally marked. I've spent a fair amount of time explaining to a fair few people over the past few days that the Returning Officer in this instance made exactly the correct decision, so here's the overview, in a nice neat central location. For context, a lot of my misspent youth involved hanging out at counts until 3 in the morning as a party-political observer, where my principal role was to ensure that no votes went into the wrong pile, and as such that any ambiguous votes were set aside for further discussion.

So. Broadly, in the UK, ballots are spoiled if (1) the caster is uniquely identifiable from the ballot paper alone (e.g. in Cambridge there's this one guy who always writes the same THE MONARCHY IS RACIST essay on his ballot paper, which wouldn't *necessarily* be enough to spoil his ballot *except* that he *also* has that same essay up in posters in his front window) (but signing the ballot paper, or writing your name on it, also count), or (2) there is no clear mark next to a single candidate.

In general, the way this works is that you do your absolute best to count the vote if there is any indication at all that a single candidate was marked out or preferred, in order to avoid the failure mode where you end up *not* counting votes because you don't like them.

So, for example, if someone draws a frowny face next to every candidate but one -- the candidate without a frowny face gets the vote. If you fill out your ballot paper as if you're voting under STV then the person who you wrote "1" next to (provided you only wrote one 1) gets your vote. If you underline one name only on your ballot paper, that candidate gets your vote -- and so on.

This is all extremely well established in precedent; for what it's worth every time there is A Major Election I tend to write up a post explaining all of this stuff. In general, there's a few spoils per ballot box, but most of them are ballot papers that are simply left blank; in simple cases (like somebody marking their ballot paper with a tick rather than a cross next to a single candidate) then if all the party-political observers agree unanimously the teller will just place the ballot paper in the obviously appropriate pile; if it gets much more complex than that the Returning Officer gets involved to make a final determination based on precedent and case law, though the amount anyone's willing to argue about it often depends on how close the vote is (because a lot of counts start at ~11pm, once the ballot boxes have had time to make it to wherever the count is being held, and then you just keep going until it's all over -- which, if there are recounts involved, can take A Very Long Time).

In this instance, if nothing else had been written on the paper, an arrow pointing at a candidate's name would be interpreted like a tick next to that candidate's name -- "this one". It's true that in this instance the intent of the scrawled "Brexit" is unclear, but given that the aim is to count as many votes as reasonably possible, and given that the arrow wasn't labelled e.g. "anyone but him" (at which point the ballot *would* be considered to not contain any statement of clear preference), I think the right call was made here.

If it wasn't what the voter intended then that's a pity, and hopefully having seen the national attention a bunch of people will do more research into how to effectively spoil ballots -- because the decision made is absolutely what would reasonably be expected by someone who had looked up how this one goes, and consistency in interpretation across electoral areas and through time is really important.

PS EU national resident in the UK? British citizen who moved abroad less that 15 years ago? REGISTER TO VOTE IN THE EUROS. You've got until tomorrow.

Today is a good day to listen to Pokémon City Limits on repeat, I'm just saying.

So as best I can tell, tim has just unfriended me everywhere on the entire Internet because -- I can only assume -- of the post I made yesterday, which disagrees pretty strenuously with his latest post about this twitter thread. I think it forms part of a disturbing pattern of behaviour on his part: I've tried (repeatedly!) expressing concern about his ableism in comments on his posts (as have others), and I've seen similar concerns expressed about his approaches to racism and other areas of oppression. He's point-blank refused to engage, as is of course his absolute right, but I am increasingly scared by how unwilling he seems to be to admit to mistakes or nuance, given ~his position in the feminist community~ and all that shit.

So here's the comment I left on that latest post, which is screened and which I imagine is likely to remain so, because actually I think the content is important.

(I hate that this is, in essence, a "call-out" post? But tim has been very clear that he thinks call-out culture is a good thing, and I have tried -- repeatedly -- to talk to him about this in his space. It has gone nowhere. So: now I'm talking about it in mine. Because I'm scared, and because I think engaging critically with his position statements actually matters, and he seems to be very keen to prevent that. Here we are.)

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This is not terribly clearly articulated (i.e. I pieced it together while mostly asleep on a car journey back up from very-nearly-the-farthest-reaches-of-Cornwall) and I'm absolutely certain it's not original, but nonetheless here's a thought on UK politics relevant to the general election campaign in which we find ourselves mired, sparked by reflection on Theresa May's emphasis on strong and stable government.

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As discussed by rydra_wong, tomorrow afternoon Inclusion London and Disabled People Against The Cuts are hosting a briefing and discussion session regarding the UN finding that the UK government was engaging in grave and systematic violations of the rights of disabled people.

You can use WriteToThem to find, and write to, your MP, in order to draw this session to their attention and urge them to attend. The event details are:

Grave and systematic violations – What next after the UN disability inquiry? Briefing and Discussion
Committee Room 12, Houses of Parliament
2.30 – 3.45pm Tuesday 24th January 2017

My letter specifically pulls my MP up on his comprehensive failure to respond to my previous e-mail to him so will be of limited use, but just in case: ( Read more... )

(If any of you have the cope to adapt this for spoonlessactivists, please by all means go ahead and do so.)

The context is, naturally, Brexit; and equally naturally, that Leave supporters started telling each other that they should take pens along to polling stations, cast their votes in ink, and then leave the pen behind To Be Helpful. In case, I suppose, of some spectre of people rubbing out their marks and replacing them with something else. (For those of you unfamiliar with how the UK does this, you cast votes using a terribly quaint system of applying pencil to paper and sticking it in a box.)

Reproducing here for posterity and (well, there's a chance) interest. (Original.)

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Yes, I typed the majority of that out one-handed on the auxiliary internet device's touchscreen, because typing still hurts. It is important and I had a feelings.