Democracy
Thomas: “There is an art to deliberately spoiling one’s ballot paper, but it can be achieved by luck alone. First of all, one must deface one’s paper in a way which will not be interpreted as a legitimate vote or, worse, a failed attempt at a legitimate vote. How does one go about this? One obvious method is to deface the entire paper with one emphatically gigantic stroke or cross: however, such a sweeping political gesture is only possible through a concurrent sweeping physical gesture, stabbing the stubby pencil ferociously into the paper and dragging it viciously from one end to the other. And what one must realise is that spoiling one’s paper, whilst being a perfectly acceptable utilisation of one’s right to participate in the meaningless fiction of democracy, is still a pretty furtive and faintly embarrassing business, to be shielded from potential observers at all costs. A dramatic flourish of the writing hand is sure to alert the presiding officer as to exactly what sort of seamy business one is about; and so the crouch and curl of one’s free arm around one’s ballot paper, like the jealous schoolboy with his exam booklet, the crabbed, jabbing little attempts at abstract representation of one’s growing disillusionment with the entire political system, short and blunt as the tied-down pencil, and the appended squiggle which nevertheless indicates one’s endorsement of the theoretical concept, if not its practical application, grandly symbolising Thomas J. Clark giving the big Thumbs-Up to Western civilisation and the democratic process!”
Friend #2: “Actually, you can just write on the ballot paper that you’re abstaining from voting, and even explain exactly why, if you so wish.”
Thomas: “HA! Well, the joke’s on YOU, because whilst you thought I was just wasting peoples’ time, I was actually voting for the Liberal Democrats!”
Friend #2: :|
Thomas: “Yeah. Don’t you feel silly now.”