The other day I was doing a spot of mental doodling while binge-watching TV election programmes and started to compile a list of unscheduled things that might happen in the polling booth...

  • You have a ‘Road to Damascus Road experience’ and the pencil is guided unerringly to a candidate you’d previously rejected.
  • You enter the booth still undecided, close your eyes, and place your cross, lucky-dip style.
  • You mistakenly cross all the names but tick just the one you want. Invalid? Oops!
  • The pencil point breaks so you produce your own, then worry if there’s a subtle difference in the leads and could this disqualify your vote?
  • You cross out all the names as a protest against the absence of female candidates (if you’re in the York Outer constituency).
  • As you cast your eye down the list do you think ‘What a choice!’ (oo!) or ‘What a choice! (oh!) with a different inflexion?
  • You have a mind block and absentmindedly play noughts and crosses with the ballot paper.
  • None of the above, but after careful consideration you responsibly and correctly put your cross beside your preferred candidate and then slip your paper into the black box.

Derek Reed, Middlethorpe Drive, York

 

Go out and vote!

As we prepare to go to the polls, I appeal to you to do two things: firstly, to vote and to vote for the candidate that you think will do the most to help us to care, as a society, for older, vulnerable and disabled people in the years ahead.

And secondly, after you have voted, to remember the moment you gave your trust to a political party to change things in the country and to hold them to account for those changes.

Mike Padgham, Chair, Independent Care Group, Priory Street, York

 

Does anyone deserve my vote?

Polling day is almost upon us and, as of Tuesday this week, not one party representative had come to my door to plead their case.

Do any of them deserve my vote I wonder?

Mary Morton, Holgate, York