RaDical MiDDle - ColdType

100 | denis beckett
Nobody accused Harvey of taking “an intellectual option.”
I heard him on the radio, being asked why not the spoilt vote.
His answer seemed to be that abstention was sounder because
there’d be more abstainers than spoilt-voters. and with the
accuracy of that insight, who could argue?
In the end the spoilt votes were no more than the normal
illiterate-and-confused quota, except in the two liberal
strongholds, the southern suburbs of cape Town and northern
suburbs of Johannesburg, where it was six times as high, which
at 3% was not dramatic. The Third Option came third, as jokers
told me for months.
Other people told me other things, such as of polling stations
in those same areas where the electoral officer had agreed with
the party representatives to divvy out spoilt votes – one for thee
and one for me, no-one present to stand up for the spoilers. I
took affidavits. I still have them. I was much urged to go to
court. Bah. What would be achieved?
One day, some day, people will again face a possibility of
creating an option that their leaders did not want to give them.
and someone will argue earlier, better, that it can be done.
Maybe the account I’ve just given you will encourage that
someone. Good. Maybe I myself will be fanatically on the side
of the Yes or the No, and abhor the third prospect. It’ll still be
good to have it; fairer, richer, an advance.
as it was, our spoilt vote frolic achieved one historic outcome.
The Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition reached
the only agreement they ever reached: that the spoilt-vote gang
were bad, bad, news.