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Comment by dao- | Hacker News Reader

You can just not vote. It has the same impact on the results of the election.

Not always - spoiled ballots can sometimes count, or indicate growing dissent in society. Not voting can achieve neither.

Here's a case from last week of a spoiled ballot giving someone a majority of one: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/ballot-pape...

Was that the result the voter intended? Probably not, but who knows? :)

I don't understand your example. That ballot paper was counted as a Tory vote, i.e. not as spoiled.

As I understood the story (the photo of the ballot that is sometimes circulated is just one taken from Twitter), the ballot had Brexit written all over it, and an arrow pointing at the Tory candidate's name, so ended up counting it as a Tory vote because of that.

That's what candidates do I recall a talk by a Labour Candidate where in his election arguing that a ballot with I vote for that bastard was for him.

This was a constituency where the previous incumbent had had some problems with his younger GF

How is this individual vote any more or less significant to the outcome than all the others?

The Tory candidate won with a majority of 1 vote.

Actually, spoiled votes show how many voters turned up but did not like any of the candidates. It's a clear message to candidates that this is not voter apathy, the votes are there for the taking, but their policies and behaviors are not supported.

Not bothering to show up at all doesn't give any clear message.

There is slight difference. First, the number of spoilt ballots is published. Second, sometimes in two-round elections, they can affect whether the candidate wins in the first round or not if it requires to get 50% of all votes including spoilt ballots.

Not legally here (Aus) - we have compulsory voting.

It's a lot less fun though

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