Spoiled ballot

The Labour agent was pretty sure they’d won. Majority should be about a thousand, give or take. The anxiety hadn’t gone but it was ebbing; he hadn’t yet allowed the euphoria to take hold, and into that space rushed the exhaustion. So he threw himself into watching the count; partly because it still might matter, partly because it he felt it was vital to show the troops that they must give it their all until the very moment the result was announced, but mostly frankly just to stay awake.

You don’t look at the whole paper, not really. You stare intently at the enemy’s box and quickly scan the rest with your peripheral vision. A cross in the box, some scribble beside it: “Spoiled ballot!”

The counter takes a second look. A clear vote for the Conservatives, but next to it some text: “the body is buried at 17 Morley Drive”. Definitely not covered by the guidelines; don’t know if it should count, don’t care. Fish it out and give it to the RO. On to the next bundle.

The Tory agent felt better than he expected to. He’d dreaded this day for many years, but part of what had drawn him to the Tories was that he rather fancied the idea of himself as a man out of time. Showing nobility in defeat fitted in rather nicely with his persona. Besides, the consequences would be hardly insufferable, particularly as they’d done rather better than they’d feared and so he had done his reputation no harm at all. So he was pleased to walk among the faithful, offering words of condolence and encouragement to the young and the despondent like the secular vicar he’d always rather hoped people saw him for.

The only thing that ate away at him slightly was that it was a bit weird his candidate was off the grid.

They were old mates, so he knew he wouldn’t take the loss too hard. As pretty much only the two of them knew he had his next job lined up already. Still it’s always a bit of a blow to the old ego to be given the heave ho, maybe he just needed to walk that off. He’d left HQ at nine thirty to vote, thank the last (purely for show) tellers, and pop back home to change. He should have been here by eleven, midnight at the latest. It was getting on for two. He’d called without success, maybe he’d fallen asleep at home? He’d dispatched a volunteer to check.

The Returning Officer loved being an RO. It was the closet being a council Chief Executive ever felt to showbiz. And you could really lean into the solemn duty public service bit. The only downside was this part, the spoiled ballots. It was an excuse for a bunch of barely adults to mansplain very simple aspects of election law to her as though she hadn’t done the exact same courses they had. Maybe that wasn’t quite fair to all of them: the Tory agent was ok, she supposed. Older guy and slightly over it. And the Green candidate was pleasantly clueless and did it all himself. But the Labour agent was frankly an arsehole and as for the Lib Dem…

At least these ballots were all fairly straightforward. They made quick work of them. The Labour and Lib Dem agents raised a few token objections largely for the sake of flapping their mouths open; the Lib Dem in particular made a risible attempt to disqualify one ballot on the basis of Rowe v Cox. She shot them down with relish.

One of the last few ballots came up. “I’m disqualifying this one for an identifying mark” the RO said flatly.

The Labour agent smirked. He’d caught that one himself.

But that smirk was too much for the Tory agent. Someone needs to stand up to this rabble. A line must be drawn. Horatio must defend the bridge. This is where we hold them.

“I’m afraid I must object,” he said firmly. “No aspect of this ballot paper identifies the voter.”

“It’s got an address on it!” said the Labour agent incredulously.

“It mentions a location in passing, there is nothing to indicate that the voter lives there.”

“Well what else could it mean?”

“What does it mean?” said the Green candidate mildly. “The body is buried…?”

“It’s probably a metaphor”, said the Lib Dem agent, who really was a complete prat. “We’re burying the Government tonight!”

Over many years of public service the Returning Officer had learned the valuable skill of never talking until she absolutely had to, and so she had been happy to let this conversation play out. But now she felt a need to take charge. “The sentence is cryptic, but the Returning Officer is not required to conduct an investigation.” (“That’s true,” said the Lib Dem, in case anyone had forgotten he was there). “On the basis of the facts available to me it’s a reasonable assumption that this is the voter’s unique identifying address.” The RO made the point of sounding like she was reading from official documents whenever she could, and even when she wasn’t.

“I do not believe that is the case,” said the Tory agent as mildly as he could but not entirely managing to keep the edge from his voice. “There are no electors at 17 Morley Drive.”

In truth this was a punt. There were seventy odd thousand electors in the constituency, thirty odd thousand houses, and several hundred streets. He definitely didn’t know them all by heart. But he had been living and breathing them for months, many of them were rattling around his subconscious, and 17 Morley didn’t sit right.

The Labour agent hesitated, fatally. He’d done the Morleys himself a few times and the Tory probably had a point. Morley Avenue was houses, but Drive only had a few at the far end, all with much higher numbers. The lower end was mostly warehouses; one or two had been converted into flats, but he was pretty sure 17 wasn’t one of them.

The Tory agent caught the eye of one of his least incompetent volunteers. “Electoral Roll BD4! Now!” he mouthed urgently, before smoothly swinging back to the RO and cheerfully suggesting, “why don’t we leave this one until the end?”

That finally stirred the Labour agent who let out an only semi-coherent squeal of protest. The Returning Officer had to dig deep not to visibly wince, but instead flashed her most professional smile and shuffled the ballot to the back of the pile — the closest thing to actually saying “fuck you” she had allowed herself to do all night.

There was only a tiny handful ballots left but the Tories worked fast and by the time the dreaded ballot came back around the Tory agent had the electoral roll for Morley Drive open in front of them. The RO’s face briefly flashed alarm — she wasn’t sure consulting the electoral register in this way was entirely proper — but the trick to maintaining control is to never for one second show any sign that you might have lost it, and that meant the window for her to object had closed.

“The electoral register for Morley Drive…” the Tory agent affected what he hoped was as neutral and pomposity free a drone as possible, “… contains voters in flats at number 3 and number 9, and then no voters until number 51”. He tried to end his sentence without sounding smug; and failed.

“Fine, have it” the Labour agent suddenly snapped. He was done. It was over. They’d won by about a thousand. He was still knackered but the euphoria was starting to surge now. There were beers to drink and many texts to send, a cocoon to emerge from after months if not years huddled alone behind a laptop.

“No! This is outrageous! You cannot allow an identifiable ballot!” the Lib Dem yelped.

Oh for the love of god will you ever shut the fuck up? The RO thought the sentence so loudly that for a moment she was worried she might have said something out loud. Instead, adopting the most withering tone she could, she said “the ballot is unusual but the parties who retain a vested interest in the outcome have reached a consensus. It is reasonable, and my guidance is to err on the side of accepting ballots wherever possible. I therefore award this ballot to the Conservative Party.” She plunged ahead before anyone had time to question this: “this concludes the allocation of disputed ballots, I shall summon you in roughly fifteen minutes when we have concluded our tallies.”

The Conservative agent was close to euphoric. The barbarians may have sacked the city but he had fought like a gentleman, and he’d got one over on that uppity little pipsqueak. His old mate was going to enjoy that story, he could tell him over conciliatory cigars and brandies later on. If the old mucker ever showed up that is. It was getting rather absurd. The result would be announced soon, it really wouldn’t do to miss one’s own concession speech.