Even the simplest things
October 24th, 2007

For someone relatively young I have some middle age tendencies. So far they haven’t extended to gardening or appreciating wine, but they do include listening to BBC Radio 5. My excuse is that it is a good way of keeping up with what is going on in the world, as if newspapers and the internet can’t help me with that. Today’s hour of radio brought to my attention a story I obviously missed the first time round – this is what happens when I don’t listen to the radio. This was the story of the ‘spoilt’ ballot papers from the recent Scottish elections.I have to confess I feel I’m missing part of the story here because I am struggling to see how over 100,000 people could fail to complete this correctly. If I had to find fault in it, it would be the use of the phrase ‘You have two votes’. To me this contradicts the ‘one person, one vote’ principle of most elections.Another criticism would be the tone of the language used; this is an individual’s moment to exercise their rights and voice yet the instructions never mention the voter, only to the process they are involved in. How about “Place a cross next to the candidate YOU want to represent Aberdeen Central in Parliament.”Actually, the more I look at this, the more I see wrong. Keep an eye out for another entry on this…