The 25 Hour News/Do You Remember The First Time?
Whether or not any of you choose to participate come May 7, chances are you’ve participated in the past – perhaps when you were less cynical and actually optimistic that casting your vote would make the country a better place. I’d hazard a guess that you were never more inclined towards the latter state of mind than the first time you ever strode into a polling station and headed into the booth.
From 1929 to 1966, you had to wait until you were twenty-one before being eligible for the ballot box; then, possibly reflective of the impact youth had made on the previous decade, the 1970 General Election saw the voting age of consent lowered to eighteen, where it has remained ever since. Depending how old you are, either twenty-one or eighteen was the age you were made to feel genuinely ‘grown-up’ because the powers-that-be suddenly valued your contribution to society.
So, it was down to the nearest primary school or church hall to do what grown-ups do. Despite calls for the voting age to be lowered another couple of years (as it was during the Scottish Independence Referendum), eighteen is probably the best age to be absorbed into the electorate. Unless you have no interest whatsoever, chances are you’ve already formed some political beliefs by that age, even if you simply dress on the same side as the rest of your family always have. Then again, the contrariness of adolescence could persuade you to deliberately vote for the traditional political nemesis of your family – a teenage ‘protest vote’ in the most teenage sense.
Anyway, you’ve all been there, so where was it – and most importantly, when was it? You don’t have to reveal who received your vote; we’re all entitled to a secret ballot, after all. But I’m sure you will remember the first time. Care to share it with us?
Petunia Winegum
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April 18, 2015 at 9:42 am -
Being stationed in Cyprus with the RAF I had to make a proxy vote and my father obliged.
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April 18, 2015 at 9:52 am -
As one who was politically aware from about 13, and ‘active’ from about 16, I couldn’t wait to vote – my chance finally came in the 1970 election, when the age-reduction to 18 coincided with my being 19, so I marked my first cross the year Edward Heath took over from Harold Wilson, presaging miners’ strikes, power-cuts, the 3-day week and joining the EEC – all of which consequences I would have preferred not to happen.
I have never missed a ballot since, voting for almost all parties at various times for various reasons, usually tactical. I’ve also positively spoiled my ballot-paper on occasions, as this can be a powerful means of getting a message to the parties, as all spoilt papers are critically and individually examined at the count, unlike all the correct ones which are merely weighed. I look forward to the ensuing chaos after May 7th with some constitutional trepidation.
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April 18, 2015 at 10:03 am -
The Lowe electorate in Sydney was represented by a former Prime Minister, who had held the seat since 1949. In my first election, I voted for him.
The 1980 Federal election was the only one in which my vote would count, as the seat was beginning to swing. The fast breeders inoculated into the electorate soon put paid to that as the middle-class types who’d bought there in the 1930s died off. The electorate has died off too, in a redistribution. I moved to a better area where my vote was superfluous.
I now find myself on the other side of the world, back in a swinging seat.
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April 18, 2015 at 10:06 am -
I don’t remember whether I voted or not at age 21. I don’t remember being all that politically minded. I recall we had mock elections at grammar school. My friend was the conservative candidate, to my surprise. She later married a con politician she met at uni. This party political situation is really intriguing and unsettling. Two canny Scots, smirking a bit, might get some clout over us English numpties. My vote will Not go to UKIP. Postal vote.
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April 18, 2015 at 10:14 am -
“You don’t have to reveal who received your vote; we’re all entitled to a secret ballot, after all”
Actually the returning officer notes your arrrival at the polling station to a numbered voting slip which can easily be correlated
to your voting slip-afterwards.So its not secret after all! WHo knows what is done with this list of voting slip numbers and the related addresses.
ALD
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April 18, 2015 at 11:40 am -
But on the basis that you don’t even need to prove your identity at the Polling Station (or even worse, your Postal Vote), the system is rather casual throughout. Its historic basis of ‘trust’ between the electorate and officialdom is certainly creaking at the margins, especially as some of the electorate now appear to be playing the system to excess.
It used to be only in Ulster where ‘personation’ was common and the slogan “Vote early and vote often” applied, now even that’s no longer necessary, you can just harvest a ream of postal ballots to influence the desired result.
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April 18, 2015 at 10:48 am -
My 15 minutes. In 1974 the voting age was lowered to 18. My birthdate was deemed significant and therefore I was interviewed by ‘investigative reporters’ from the Sun. Typically, I was monosyllabic and surly. As always, I vote National Bolshevist. The only party dedicated to free pizza and annexation of the Sudetanland.
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April 18, 2015 at 10:59 am -
1987 and I voted for HER (aka ‘God’).Of course. Despite being a ‘rebel’ and fairly active in various ‘underground’ things and despite being a supporter of the IRA. I could remember how England was before she descended to dwell among us. Never forgave The Unions for shutting down Children’s TV and making me miss my programs in the Winter Of Discontent. “Anarchy In The UK” may have been painted on my jacket but “Matriarchy rules OK, Ma’am” ran through my southern British heart like a stick of rock.
Yep, lost my electoral cherry to the Iron Lady. Or as I said to a German Marriage Counselor a couple of years after :” I’m British, I have been a subject of the Queen from Birth, Lived under a female Prime Minister since I was a Kid . I have no problem with a woman telling me what to do”.
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April 18, 2015 at 11:06 am -
1955 Captain Charles Waterhouse, see Wikipedia, an officer and a gentleman.
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April 18, 2015 at 11:28 am -
I voted in 1992 – Conservative stronghold on this constiency.
From 1997 onwards I have worked every election (general & local) as poll clerk/presiding officer – ironic that starting year – the term ‘landslide’ has never been so accurate in terms of long-term effect. -
April 18, 2015 at 11:56 am -
’97 as an 18 year-old undergraduate. Had the option of voting either in the constituency where my hall of residence was or at home via proxy and chose the latter (frankly, I probably could have voted in both without any repercussions). Voted the same way in ’01 and ’05 as ’97, spoilt it in ’10 but won’t even be bothering to do that this year since I’m not currently on the electoral register.
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April 18, 2015 at 12:38 pm -
My first chance to vote came in the referendum on continued membership of the EEC – I don’t mind revealing that I voted NO. Shortly after moving into my own home I became actively involved in my local Conservative Association, and remained so from 1982 – 1999. I did all the things connected with election campaigns including canvassing, leafleting, telling, attending numerous counts and even standing as a local council candidate on a few occasions.
I was drawn into the party by the performance and policies of its then leadership. Even before the 1997 GE I was becoming more and more disillusioned with politics, and withdrew my support completely. I have not often bothered to vote since then, having come to the conclusion that it really had become a waste of time.
After turning 18 I voted for many parties including the NF, BNP, Liberal, Communist, all 3 main parties and more recently spoiling my paper on a few occasions.
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April 18, 2015 at 12:44 pm -
1974
Abused then, in my youth, by both local, and national, politicians. Just another member of the mass electorate when raped later, by the same miscreants, in adulthood.
Still can’t find any one of them who has any interest in righting such historic wrongs, or preventing their reoccurrence, with even less chance of finding any of them who might say that they will “believe me” when I tell them what they really are, and have done.
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April 18, 2015 at 1:18 pm -
“Iggy Pop For President” got two votes in 1987: one on my own ballot paper (in Wiltshire in the morning) and one on my mate’s – who couldn’t be arsed to vote (in London in the evening). It has since become a bit of a habit.
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April 18, 2015 at 1:24 pm -
February 1974. I ignored Enoch Powell’s advice but Alan Clark was the Tory candidate. Then I voted to leave the “Common Market” in ’75.
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April 18, 2015 at 2:41 pm -
Never apologise. It’s a sign of weakness.
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April 18, 2015 at 1:34 pm -
It has always amazed me that the so called ‘secret’ ballot has the correlatable number on the voting slip and your electoral roll number. I suppose that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to do it.
The first job in the count is to see how many votes were recorded and how many slips there are. If you do want to cause mayhem, and you spoiled your slip, then put it in the wrong box. What counts as as a spoiled vote depends. You are supposed to put a cross – ticks count, provided there is the right number. But, putting an X against the ones you don’t want, and writing ‘none of these feckers!’ depends on whether agreement can be reached – for my money, the voter intention is clear, but technically it is spoilt. Even in a parliamentary constituency, the number of spoilt papers is so small, and the majority so clear, that it isn’t a real problem – in a council election it may be as many as 4 or 5, and often they are spoilt accidentally (by crossing out, mainly).
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April 18, 2015 at 5:00 pm -
Too young to vote for Mrs Thatcher. I missed my first because my housemate told me he had registered us to vote. When I arrived at the polling station I discovered that he had not – apparently I was registered for council tax. Taxation without representation…
We will soon have the ludicrous situation that sixteen year olds will be trusted to vote but not to buy glue or scissors.
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April 18, 2015 at 5:59 pm -
“We will soon have the ludicrous situation that sixteen year olds will be trusted to vote but not to buy glue or scissors.”
Yes youou raise an interesting and importnat point. There are many other aspects of daily life that are currently restricted to the over 18’s, and yet it is being proposed to give the vote to 16 year olds. We could end up with a government having been voted into office by an electorate including 16 year olds sending men and women off to fight and die in armed conflicts. A government legislating on drink related issues. These are just two examples.
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April 18, 2015 at 5:33 pm -
Local primary school in Glasgow aged 21, I remember being quite excited about it. I was always interested in politics and studied it with economic history at university but now, I can’t feel any enthusiasm for any of them though being in a safe Conservative seat I won’t make any difference and I view them as the lesser of two evils I guess. I still think 21 was the right age and it’s not until you start payng taxes and have to pay a mortgage or rent that you really pay attention. The idea of voting at 16 seems ridiculous as very few will be paying taxes and will be in school as many are at 18 now. There should be a single age of majority, probably 18 as there is no way back.
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April 18, 2015 at 6:04 pm -
In principle, I like the idea of a single age of majority, but you’d have to combine so many things that the eventual common compromise age would probably be wrong for everything and right for nothing. Not only voting, but alcohol, porn, consent, gambling, criminal responsibility, military service, HGV truck-driving etc. Ben hints at the problem above: however you fix the ages, you always end up creating nonsenses by comparison.
Although I was personally itching to vote by 16, I did not then and would not now support reducing the age to that level – most 16-year-olds of my recent acquaintance do not have the knowledge, interest or experience to cast a vote smartly. The simple binary choice in the Jock Referendum made it look easy, the reality of other elections is far from simple. In some parts of society, it’s just another free handful of Postal Votes to fiddle/sell.-
April 18, 2015 at 8:02 pm -
knowledge, interest or experience to cast a vote smartly
I would contend that that would make them supremely qualified to vote! “Vimes could see the flaw right there” or put another way:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b116/horta/soonerOrlaterz_zpsvhiufokv.png
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April 19, 2015 at 7:39 am -
That’s actually quite funny.
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April 19, 2015 at 8:37 am -
That’s actually quite funny.
Strangely enough I hated it at the time, thought it one of the worst strips 2000AD had ever done…however with passing decades and Old Age (it’s maturity Jim, but not as we know it) I have come to appreciate the 1980ness of it and how it reminds me of an ‘alternative’ London.
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April 18, 2015 at 7:54 pm -
Oddly, I don’t. I was, however, a member of the SDP. I have grown up now.
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April 19, 2015 at 10:17 pm -
Ah yes, I remember the SDP: as I said at the time, ‘Now the “Don’t Knows” have a party of their own’…
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April 18, 2015 at 8:09 pm -
Can’t remember my first vote, but as long as I can remember it’s a must do.
Never had any party affiliation, but I have reluctantly worn a rosette & done telling for a very good county councillor, now sadly deceased.
In my rural polling station I reckon the chance of personisation is pretty slim, but I agree the whole system is vulnerable. Hard to see why it wouldn’t be abused in urban areas, & I think the term ‘banana republic’ has already been used to describe our postal voting system.
A friend works as a polling clerk most elections, & has this year drawn the ace- The Rising Sun, a great old fashioned pub I’ve used as a walk target many times.
Obviously addicted, so standing again as parish councillor; like most P.C.s, no contest as not enough nominations, but still required to submit a Return of Expenses. Why is it MPs don’t seem to be under as many rules & regulations as us pond life?
Still going to have to be Nigel; I can ignore the oddballs, they won’t be in power anyway.
Paid leave for volunteers? I can’t think of any response but WTF. -
April 19, 2015 at 7:29 am -
The first UK Election that I participated in was the June 1987 one.
I wandered down to the Polling Station at the local Methodists Hall on a fine, early summer morning and cast my vote for the Welsh Windbag on the rather idiotic basis that we were working class and only Labour supported the working class. In hindsight this was spectacularly naïve, but there you go. I finally learned my lesson after the first term of Tony Bliar, so at least I wasn’t an idiot all my life.
I ceased to be part of the UK Electorate in 2009 and quite frankly I am glad as I no longer feel any blame for the idiots in charge, I simply watch aghast from a distance.
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April 19, 2015 at 7:49 am -
Personally I think Billy Connolly had it about right.
If you wouldn’t drink with them, don’t fucking vote for them
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April 19, 2015 at 7:57 am -
I managed to be working overseas for every election up until my 50’s ! That was the second Blair election and our local hunts encouraged all supporters to canvas for the Conservatives, which I duly did. Pounded many a pavement for the cause.
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April 19, 2015 at 8:59 am -
Half a century ago, in 1964, the Tory leader Sir Alec Douglas-Home braved a furious audience at the Birmingham Rag Market. I was not there. However, I did go and listen to the then Labour leader Harold Wilson raise the same roof in front of probably a thousand people.
He was promising training, apprenticeships and jobs in the ‘age of new technology’.
For the once and only time in my like I voted Labour. I did however go to university, free in those day, and do a ‘sandwich’ degree course in Electrical Engineering. So I was grateful to him. -
April 19, 2015 at 9:45 am -
Ain’t that the sad truth.
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April 19, 2015 at 12:32 pm -
I’ve been living in Israel these last 28 years and am still entitled to vote and encouraged to do so by the Embassy. I haven’t and I shan’t; you got yourselves into this mess and you can get yourselves out of it.
My only unusual voting experience was shaking Keith Joseph’s hand when I was 15. That should be worth a few thousands in criminal compensation in a couple of years. -
April 19, 2015 at 2:17 pm -
20 odd years in the British Army, mainly abroad, meant that vote was by proxy (my ‘born Labour and will die Labour’ Dad). I later learned that when I asked him to vote Conservative on my behalf, my registration card ended up down the back of the sofa, eaten by next door’s dog, or fell into the fire. Having realised some years ago that the Labour Party has represented the poorer parts of the country for almost 100 years and, despite quite a few Labour governments, they are still the poorer parts of the country, have usually voted Conservative on the grounds that their self serving bastards won’t cause as much damage as the other self serving bastards, though considering UKIP or spoiling my paper in protest at Cameron leaving this country more or less defenceless through destruction of the Armed Forces.
SimonB, how come you can still vote after 28 years in Israel when a colleague who lives in France has been told he can no longer do so? If Keith Joseph shook your hand, suggest you weren’t in socio-economic groups 4 or 5? -
April 19, 2015 at 5:16 pm -
Penseivat, you’re right.
I saw the notices in the English language press but didn’t check the small print.
I may well have been in socio-economic group 4 (lower middle class?).
I met Keith Joseph when he came to my home town Basildon (!) in 1966 to support the Conservative candidate, who was eventually beaten by Eric Moonman. I was introduced to Joseph by the leader of the Basildon Hebrew Congregation; Joseph then duly shook my hand.
This wasn’t my first brush with the right wing of the Conservative party. When I was barmitzvah, I received a prayer book from the congregation, which was signed by the President – Harold Soref. -
April 20, 2015 at 12:30 pm -
My first vote was in the 1975 EEC referendum.
It was an entirely pointless exercise as we were already signed up and the vote was just supposed to be to show general approval.
I voted against as I disapproved of their agriculture policy – particularly dyeing apples blue so that people were discouraged from eating the surpluses.
I voted in the newly created borough of Haringey.
So far no one I have ever voted for has been elected – but I am not surprised as I am a bit of a contrarian. -
August 4, 2015 at 2:49 pm -
Did anyone else notice that in the referendum for the EEC in 1975 at the polling station the voting slip wording had been changed round so that if you voted NO to leave the EEC you actualy voted to stay in the EEC and vice versa
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August 4, 2015 at 2:54 pm -
You mean I may have voted for the wrong side? I remember the referendum. I remember voting. And I remember my intention at the time.
But I can’t remember what I read.-
August 4, 2015 at 3:04 pm -
Historical electoral abuse?
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August 4, 2015 at 3:34 pm -
Well I think this is a case where might be corroboration – but not of how the mens rea translated into the actus reus. I mean, I might just have been stupid. I can’t remember if there was a ‘we’ve been robbed’ furore at the time – but that would be documented too.
On the whole I think it was unlikely I was conned (at least by the ballot paper) – there was a greater attention to the meaning of words in those days.-
August 4, 2015 at 3:40 pm -
seems pretty bloody obvious to me
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KtWhH8wPXbs/U9n_rr7xsNI/AAAAAAAAAZg/V6KuRRSbCPw/s1600/1975EUreferendum.jpg
but then what sort of conspiracy theorist does that make me?-
August 4, 2015 at 3:56 pm -
Wait a mo – while the question is straightforward, it doesn’t indicate what the logical relationship should be between para 1 and the question. It doesn’t say ‘in the light of this’ do you think… ie it’s not conditional. Yet it’s implied that it is.
So if the terms were misrepresented, does that invalidate the question and the result?
No. Because it is only implicit not explicit.
Is that the conspiracy?
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