Has anyone actually been caught doing that?

If MPs are serious about increasing voter turnabout they should add "None of the Above" to the ballot paper.

Currently your only choice apart from staying indoors is to spoil your vote which lumps you in with the idiots who mess up their ballot papers. I for one would like to know how many genuinely messed up papers there are versus voters who are protesting.

From my experience of voter counting I would say the vast majority of voters spoil their ballot paper deliberately. But then the MPs don't want to know that do they because then they'll have to do something about it. Much better to complain that the electorate are idiots who can't put a cross in the right box.

By the way for a vote to be spoilt the voter must really mess up. If you start to put a cross in one box realise you made a mistake and cross it out and do it correctly it will normally be counted. As long as the voter intention is clear.

I was a count assistant at both the recent district council and European parliament elections. At the former count, I unfolded a ballot paper on which the 'voter' had written derogatory comments about all but one candidate ("w@nker" "tw@t" "@rsehole" etc). For the remaining candidate, they had drawn a lovely schoolboy-esque cock and hairy balls with an accompanying dotted line to represent ejaculate. Naturally, I put this paper on the 'doubtful' pile.

When the 'doubtful' ballot papers for the ward I was counting were then reviewed by the Deputy Returning Officer - a process which is witnessed by/discussed with the candidates or their representatives - the agreed conclusion was that the cock and balls drawing should be accepted as a vote, on the grounds that it had been executed completely within the confines of the box corresponding to the candidate, whereas the derogatory comments had been written in the white space next to the respective candidates' names (ie not in the box). All parties therefore agreed that the drawing was acceptable "on the balance of probability" as a valid indication of voting intention.

Edited by YT (02 Jun 2019 9.34pm)

I was a count assistant at both the recent district council and European parliament elections. At the former count, I unfolded a ballot paper on which the 'voter' had written derogatory comments about all but one candidate ("w@nker" "tw@t" "@rsehole" etc). For the remaining candidate, they had drawn a lovely schoolboy-esque cock and hairy balls with an accompanying dotted line to represent ejaculate. Naturally, I put this paper on the 'doubtful' pile.

When the 'doubtful' ballot papers for the ward I was counting were then reviewed by the Deputy Returning Officer - a process which is witnessed by/discussed with the candidates or their representatives - the agreed conclusion was that the cock and balls drawing should be accepted as a vote, on the grounds that it had been executed completely within the confines of the box corresponding to the candidate, whereas the derogatory comments had been written in the white space next to the respective candidates' names (ie not in the box). All parties therefore agreed that the drawing was acceptable "on the balance of probability" as a valid indication of voting intention.

Edited by YT (02 Jun 2019 9.34pm)

The latest figures apropos Conservative MPs voting intentions (Top six) :

Johnson 30, Gove 29, Hunt 29,Raab 23, Javid 17, Hancock 11.