Thursday 7 May 2015

You really have to wonder...

Today in the UK is election day, I'm not really going to go on about that, but if you are in the UK and reading this, please vote. It doesn't matter who for, you can even go and spoil your paper if you really want, but do it, it is important and it does matter. I have gone on about this before though, so I won't today.

I have already voted, being out of the country I got to experience a postal vote for the first time, I only hope that it didn't get re-directed on the way back via somewhere random and then not arrive in time. Voting by post was a bit of an experience. I had a normal voting slip which went in an envelope with a window, but turned round so you couldn't see who'd I'd voted for. Then there was a declaration to sign, and the whole thing went into another envelope with a window. What amused me more than anything was the extra bit of paper. A green slip of paper, that did admittedly have a number or two printed on the back, but on the front was this important warning:

You really have to wonder...

This is not a ballot paper. Please remove and destroy this section.

Thank you so much for those words of wisdom, despite the lack of anything else printed on it, I'm sure that I could have easily become confused and thought that it was a ballot paper. I might have even gone as far as putting an 'x' on it and voting for...well no one actually. I'm not sure what the point of the paper was, but even if it had some strange purpose, I'm sure that it didn't need that warning on there, any more than a bag of peanuts needs to warn you that it contains nuts.

I'm sure that it was in there with the aim of clarifying things, to make them less confusing, but like many things that try to do this, if they don't make them simpler, then it doesn't make it less confusing. The more instructions that you give, the more confusing and complicated it becomes. Either way, I think I did it right, because I didn't try and use this piece of paper to vote. Having said that, I haven't destroyed it yet either, hope I'm not going to get in trouble for that...

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