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I would say that it is impossible to give any accurate information regarding what was on a ballot paper when there is no official data collected.
At the count the ballot papers that are not correctly filled in are put in a separate tray and before the count is made the candidates and agents are asked to take a look at all the rejected papers to see if any of them are acceptable. in my count there was one paper where the voter had put a cross on the 2 Labour candidates and the first line of a cross on my name. To me this was clear enough that the voter intended to vote for the 2 Labour candidates and made a mistake by starting to put a cross on my name so this went through as a valid vote. the rest of the papers in the tray were rejected. Now we never had time to count how many were being rejected for any particular reason but most were because a voter had not actually voted for any candidate or had voted for more than they were allowed to vote for. But the fact is that they were not separated into different piles for different reasons. They were just counted together. So I fail to see how anyone could come up with the figure that you quote. It is just someones guess
Grandad, Over the years I have been involved in many things, local and national elections, and I know how they work and also know how important it is for people to vote, but I am not a great believer in voting for the best of a bad bunch. Now you might believe that 39,000 people are just plain stupid, but make the effort to go to their polling station, get their slip and don't know where to put the cross, whereas I tend to believe that they went and made a statement and by spoiling their voting paper they have said they are not voting for "any of the above". Our electoral system needs to be revamped. You could go one step further and assume that everyone who doesn't vote makes the same statement, and when you combine the figures, there are more people against than there are for.