Election Irony

Yesterday's Scottish elections presented me with a conundrum, since my seat and council ward could only ever be won by SNP or Labour my choices on voting were pretty limited. Vote Labour to keep SNP out, vote SNP to keep Labour out or vote for anyone else and waste my vote. So ... as I've done in the past I decided that the best course of action was to spoil my vote, thereby showing my distain for the current system which means unless you vote for the winner in your constituency your vote is worthless and even if you do vote, you're voting for someone who will largely ignore you for 4 years while they represent the whims of their party in parliament despite what the populace are telling them.

Anyway, long story short there are going to be an estimated 100,000 rejected ballots in this election which would be a good thing for me if these were recognised as actual protest votes but here's where I get screwed. The media and politicians are saying that the 100,000 rejected ballots are actually down to people being unable to follow simple instructions and are in fact not protest votes, but mistakes people have made trying to cast a legitimate vote.

Therefore my protest vote has now been lost with all the "too stupid to follow simple instructions" votes thereby making it a complete waste of a vote. Which since it was the only option I could see for a vote which actually counted for something is a bit crap.