Voting in Scotland this time round is very complicated. There were three different things to vote for/about, and two different ways of voting. Had various conversations with colleagues and all seemed to be vaguely confused, except for the happy few who will always vote for the party their family voted for, no matter what. Seems that you can vote for your favourite party and also for your favourite individual even if you’re not all that keen on the individual’s party.

My main goal was NOT to invalidate my vote. So I was focussing on “cross, cross, numbers” (ie the first two votes you put a cross against your favourite, the final one you get to rank your favourites in order).

And I hadn’t quite decided who to vote for till I finally got to the ballot box so I was a bit nervous and suddenly thought it might be illegal to have have flyers in the booth with me (like cheating in exams! I should have revised more! I should have memorised who was who and what each party stood for!). So I did the first two crosses kind of impulsively and then started to think about the one that needed numbers. And then noticed the words at the top saying “mark with a cross”. Argh! The mantra of “cross, cross, numbers” only works if you get the ballot papers in the right order!!

See wikipedia for details on how complicated it is.

Good stuff that happened:

• Socialists were a bit pushy as I went in, saying something like “can I count on your vote today?”, then said I’d said “no” in a more friendly way than anyone else all day. (Still didn’t vote for them though)
• Nice man explained how the three votes worked before I went in
• When I messed it up, another nice man had a rubber I could use, so I think I may have achieved my goal of not invalidating my vote
• We have freedom to vote, that’s got to be a good thing
• It was a lovely sunny day
• I had an ice cream