Voting.

There were a lot of ballot papers in Scotland today. There were - sorry, still are, since the polls are open until 10pm - the council elections, the (Scottish) Parliament constituency elections and the Parliament regional elections.

There were only two ballot papers, the two Parliamentary polls using the same paper. This one was easy to fill out - put an X in one box in each of two columns.

The council elections were rather more complicated. For the first time (I think it is the first), they are using a single transferrable vote. One has to rank the candidates in order. You have as many votes as there are candidates, if you want to rank them all.

I managed to screw this one up.

Twice.

The first time, I hadn't realised that there were two council candidates from the party which I wanted to get my vote. The second time, I somehow managed to put my first vote against the Conservative candidate. This would have been the first time ever that I had voted Conservative, so I sheepishly went back to the very patient officials once more, who were very happy to replace my ballot papers once again (although they had to replace BOTH papers; so you could say that I actually voted six times today - it's just that only two of them count...). They also said they had had an awful lot of people making similar mistakes. I didn't ask them how many people had fucked it up twice, though.

Oh, and this was the favourite election poster I saw:

Voting.

There were a lot of ballot papers in Scotland today. There were - sorry, still are, since the polls are open until 10pm - the council elections, the (Scottish) Parliament constituency elections and the Parliament regional elections.

There were only two ballot papers, the two Parliamentary polls using the same paper. This one was easy to fill out - put an X in one box in each of two columns.

The council elections were rather more complicated. For the first time (I think it is the first), they are using a single transferrable vote. One has to rank the candidates in order. You have as many votes as there are candidates, if you want to rank them all.

I managed to screw this one up.

Twice.

The first time, I hadn't realised that there were two council candidates from the party which I wanted to get my vote. The second time, I somehow managed to put my first vote against the Conservative candidate. This would have been the first time ever that I had voted Conservative, so I sheepishly went back to the very patient officials once more, who were very happy to replace my ballot papers once again (although they had to replace BOTH papers; so you could say that I actually voted six times today - it's just that only two of them count...). They also said they had had an awful lot of people making similar mistakes. I didn't ask them how many people had fucked it up twice, though.

Oh, and this was the favourite election poster I saw: