Soiling your ballot

Be warned: don’t read this post while having your tea!

One of the great things about being in a wheelchair, as I am, is that you get a postal vote. And this has allowed me in the past couple of elections to indulge in a personal fantasy: filling in my ballot paper on the jacks.

Now, I have too much regard for those brave souls who farted and died before me so that I could have the right every couple of years to put numbers beside the names of assorted crooks, wannabe crooks and gonnabe crooks to use the ballot paper for a task more appropriate to the location, though I am sometimes tempted. I also think of the many who struggle every day on this plant in pursuit of democracy, especially in countries like China and, yes, Putin’s Russia.

I read down the list observing the display of facelifts, terrible comb-overs, really obvious hair pieces, not to mention that “rabbit-in-the-headlights” expression. And I wonder who then will I cast my vote for. I hear the plaintive voices of the candidates. “Ah Jesus, give us an oul’ vote won’t ya. Think o’ the missus an’ the little chisselers, we’ll be out on the streets if I lose me seat, and I’ll be back on the labour…” But then I contrast this with their attitude towards me—and many other members of the public—once elected. This could best be summed up as equivalent to seeing a dog turd on the path: disgust mixed with an equally strong desire to avoid contact.

So disgusted by the calibre of candidate was I that I once, seriously, toyed with the notion of entering my own name in the electoral lists. There would then be somebody with the requisite intellectual and moral fibre, not to mention irresistable good looks necessary to attract my electoral support.

I was tempted once to spoil my ballot by writing obscenities about a local government official who thought he was God and whom all local elected representatives were in thrall to. I was warned against it: “He’d sue your arse off,” I was told. But that’s just it. He or nobody else can sue you for what you do with or to your ballot paper. It’s private, a bit like masturbation. But there is this thing called The Secret Ballot, considered by some to be an essential prerequisite of democracy; this wasn’t always the case. If anyone were to even hint that they knew what I did with my ballot paper in the voting booth—who I voted for, or whether I merely wrote sexy love letters to the returning officer—they would be showing that the secrecy of the ballot did not exist.

A friend of mine, by no means poorly educated, complained to me about how his mother dragooned him into going to vote for a certain local politician “because he always looked after your father.” I asked him, “Are you a man? Will you cry your eyes out if mammy doesn’t hold your hand as you go into the polling booth? I know, you’re afraid to be in there on your own poor pet…”

But my advice to people is vote. Even if all the candidates are wankers, write that on the ballot paper before you put it in the ballot box. It won’t do any good but it’s a hell of a lot better than staying at home on election day saying: “I can’t be arsed to vote.” I know I will; it doesn’t mean I’ll vote for anyone.

And returning finally to me closeted like Voltaire in the smallest room in the house. I exhale a sight of supercilious disgust at those seeking election. I place the unmarked ballot-paper in the little envelope, and then I wash my hands.