Disposable democracy

According to the preliminary figures from Elections Newfoundland and Labrador (.pdf document), 1026 people spoiled their ballots in the late provincial election, and that with the election being deferred or cancelled in two of forty-eight districts.

That is the largest number of spoiled ballots since the 1034 recorded in 1982 — another landslide PC win on a wave of jingoist-nationalist rhetoric — and the fourth-highest ever.

Well, the fifth, really — there were 1027 spoiled ballots in 1956, but in 2007 there's still one district left for at least two people to spoil their ballots in.

In percentage terms, the spoiled ballots were nearly half a percent — 0.47% — of all ballots cast. That's the highest rate since the 0.48% recorded in 1972, and the highest in the post-Smallwood era.