There was a council by-election in Nottingham in which Labour won with 1179 votes, Tories came a close second with 1025 votes and UKIP came in third with a respectable 536.
The Lib Dems? They came fifth with 56 votes. Yes, there are 56 people in Nottingham who still believe in this crowd of loonies. A low enough result to stamp ‘Return to Sender’ on the yellow rosette this time. But wait, I’ve missed one out.
Fourth place went to the Bus-Pass Elvis party with 67 votes. Campaigning this time on a promise to legalise brothels and have a 30% discount for pensioners. That, it seems, was more appealing than whatever the Lib Dems had to offer.
Unfortunately, the various incarnations of the Elvis Party also want to ban airguns. So no real improvement then.
Even so… I laughed like Sid James at the story.
What a pity the Tories split the UKIP vote. There could have been a decent result otherwise.
underdogs bite upwards 
The Lib Dems are doooooooooooooooooomed at the next election I think!! As I see it none of the twats are fit for purpose. This next election is going to be a strange one as I can’t see anyone getting an overall majority again, I also predict it will receive the lowest turnout percentage of any GE in history.
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Anything less than a 60% (? Higher?) turn out should be declared null and void.
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Definhitely. If the candidate can’t motivate people to vote for them, they are obviously crap from the outset.
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However, to be avoided is the compulsion to vote, as pertains in Australia (or did when I was living there). I got fined for not voting the first year I was there. You could have knocked me down with a feather – I had no idea it was compulsory. I also had no idea who the politicians were and what they stood for, which is why I didn’t vote.
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Compulsory voting is no good. If I was forced to vote, I’d vote for the most ridiculous candidate on the sheet simply because I was being forced to do it.
Instead, what is needed (and what is missing) are candidates who actually motivate people to vote for them. You know the sort of people. Leaders.
It would make a nice change if we had some of those to choose from, once in a while.
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I have a soft spot for compulsory voting BUT… only with a box for ‘none of you bastards’. If that gets the most votes, none of the bastards are elected. And there are reruns until a sufficiently acceptable canditate turns up.
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An easier method is to implement a legal fiction: if a voter doesn’t turn up and vote, then their vote is cast for them, for the candidate RON, or Re-Open Nominations.
Effectively this means that if nobody can be bothered to turn up, then RON gets elected and an immediate follow-up election is called, with all previous candidated being barred from standing. In the current political climate, it might take quite a while before RON is defeated, but as such a process would remove unpopular candidates from the available pool, I reckon it is worth a try.
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Which is another of my bugbears. People should have to take an I.Q test, and a test in what the various candidates stand for, before being alowed near a ballot box.
Local (council) elections, an I.Q of 100 is allowable. National elections one must achieve at LEAST 120.
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Still is compulsory. You can prevent it escalating by paying a 20AUD fee or explaining why you didn’t, couldn’t or wouldn’t make it. If you don’t, it’s off to the magistrates and if you don’t pay the penalty there it can get ugly.
I skipped many elections as I was too busy and lived in a safe seat. Never heard a peep.
The compulsory vote must puff up the Labor result by at least 5%. I’m very surprised that no Liberal government with the balance of power in both Houses never did away with it.
Look at the drones here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-23810381 Jesus, it’s not even 10am and I’m wishing tumours on people I don’t know.
I wish they had interviewed me. Far from dissenting, I’d take things further and have all persons physically escorted to the poll by police, and insist on savage penalties for anyone spoiling his ballot.
This is merely copying my policy on bicycle helmets – that they should not only be compulsory but should be motorcycle-style, full-face, and should also be worn in cars. For the children.
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That council election had a total of 2863 votes cast.
Nottingham is a big place, I don’t know how the council wards are split but the town population is around 305,700. If they were all entitled to vote, that would give a turnout of 1%
Even if half of them are below voting age it’s only 2%
I expect the council’s area isn’t the whole of Nottingham though – but even so, I’m sure their area covers a lot more than 2863 people.
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Clifton North Ward, close to Nottingham Trent University’s second campus.
Turnout: 26.53%
Nottingham City Council, motto “A safe, clean, ambitious Nottingham. A city we’re all proud of”, where signs affixed to lamp-posts hector you about smoking, litter and binge-drinking. Paid for by council tax, naturally. Thankfully, I live in the area which is only being trashed by the City Council’s farcical tram building scheme…
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Oh, so my guess of 2% wasn’t all that far out after all.
So the Labour candidate has a mandate from around 10% of the electorate. Well whoop de diddly doo. As Furor said, turnouts of less than 60% should be declared void.
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The dire turnout should tell these twats that we’re not interested in them, and I also agree at the less than X amount it’s null and void, oh and a “None of the above” box added to the voting sheet at General Elections, that might get me out voting. 🙂
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XX “None of the above” box added to the voting sheet at General Elections, that might get me out voting. XX
Utter bollox. You do that by simply not turning up.
What they need to do, is the minimum turn out rule, but also a “Gohst candidate,” which is considered to have been voted for by all those mother fucking simpelton imbicilic twats that “spoil the ballot paper,” or do just not bother to turn up.
The “gohsts” vote is detracted, as a percentage, from the number of votes of the other partys. And in local councils, or Parliament, the “Gohst vote” is subtracted from the votes of the winner of any debate.
A few elections won by the gohst should concentrate what passes for minds in a Politician.
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P.S Pre-election promises and manifestos should be made legaly binding documents, and not just “an offer to treat.”
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