UKIP to change their name to Aardvark Party

Surely people don't tick the first box they see?

I would have thought that anyone voting UKIP would have had an idea who they were voting for before arriving at the polling station, therefore would unfold the paper to look for them rather than tick someone higher up the list?

Our ballot papers weren't folded when they were given to us so i don't see what the problem is....

Sometimes I really, really despair about stuff. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Mind you, at least in our area, the Euro election ballot paper was like one of those "comedy" speeches where the speaker unrolls about 50 feet of paper. Bloody thing was huge. I was quite tempted by the Roman Party ("AVE!") myself.

I'm pretty sure that there's research showing that if you are first on the ballot paper, you will mop up a higher number of "Oh God, I don't know who to vote for, they'll do" votes than other positions on the paper.

Ours were folded about four times ?

I've heard the same thing as Zeb- it is an advantage to be first on the ballot paper.

They usually are to help people fold them up nice and tight for packing into the box.

PL - I got handed our Euro paper and went Good Grief, how many? The ladies at the station said, yep, that's what everyone's said ?

They usually are to help people fold them up nice and tight for packing into the box.

PL - I got handed our Euro paper and went Good Grief, how many? The ladies at the station said, yep, that's what everyone's said ?

We had to fold them - we had the South East England Euro seat being voted for out of our polling station and we went through two ballot boxes for just under 600 voters. And even then we were having to shake them down to fit all the votes in. We even got told off for the size of the Euro ballot paper.

Sadly, a lot of people did vote for the first party they see - although the polling booths give privacy, the number of people who decided to make their marks on the tables in the middle of the room, or on the table in front of us was staggering.

Top of my polling sheet was the BNP - I hope they don't get any extra votes by default.

That was the same as ours. Unfortunatly I think they will probably get lots of votes round here.

Caveat: I consider myself pretty intelligent but haven't voted for over 12 years.

I was actively looking for them and nearly didn't find them as the bottom section was folded, thereby obscuring them and the party above them. I suspect it will adversely affect their result.

I saw that party on my ballot paper and had a little chuckle to myself, I did think about 'wasting' my vote but then thought better of it . However there were a few parties I'd never even heard of let alone knew what there policies were.

Little ballot papers don't always help either - the council election ballot paper here was about 5 inches by 5 - and we still had people coming out and asking where the BNP candidate was or where was the UKIP candidate. (FWIW, neither party was standing in that ward......).

I worked as a polling clerk at one of our local polling stations and when we heard a complaint had been made from Ukip about not folding the ballot papers we just thought it was a local thing not realising it was national. We thought it was daft because the majority of our voters seemed to know who they were going to vote for anyway regardless of where the party was located on the ballot sheet. do they really think my not folding the paper people are going to miss them at the bottom! I loved the one guy who'd created the Roman Party, we were hoping he was going to pop into our polling station dressed like a Roman ?

I worked as a polling clerk at one of our local polling stations and when we heard a complaint had been made from Ukip about not folding the ballot papers we just thought it was a local thing not realising it was national. We thought it was daft because the majority of our voters seemed to know who they were going to vote for anyway regardless of where the party was located on the ballot sheet. do they really think my not folding the paper people are going to miss them at the bottom! I loved the one guy who'd created the Roman Party, we were hoping he was going to pop into our polling station dressed like a Roman ?

Bit of an aside but we used to joke that our school was going to change it's name to the Aardvark college as it did actually change it's name (from Ingatestone Anglo European School to Anglo European School, Ingatestone) so it appeared higher in alphabetical league tables.

Not really sure what this achieved but hey ho.