I’ve already voted

I’ve already voted.

If I died tomorrow my vote would still count. I like the fact that the vote of one dead man would outweigh the vote of 250,000 Russell Brand fans exercising their right not to vote. It’s evidence that the system works.

I always vote early – I’ve decided before the campaign starts who I’m going to vote for, I’m not interested in their promises and lies, their smiley poses with their wives.  I push my postal vote through the mailbox within a few minutes of it arriving, and that’s it, I’m done.

Or at least, it should be all done. I should be able to close the door on the election mayhem and say ‘Come back in five years’. But it’s not like that. When I come home from work at night I can’t open my front door, because there 147,319 leaflets piled up on the other side, literature from every party standing in my constituency, from candidates standing in neighbouring constituencies, leaflets from pizza companies, leaflets from parties promising to ban pizza (horrible Italian immigrant food), leaflets promising free pizza for everyone (paid for by tax cuts) and leaflets from our hapless Lib Dem MP, who’ll doubtless be returning to his pizza delivery job when he’s kicked out this time round.

I turn on the TV, but it’s wall to wall politicians, all pretending to be talking to real people by posing with party activists dressed as teachers and nurses (that matron looks suspiciously like John Prescott). 

And there’s a queue of them at my door, all of them desperate to change my lifelong, passionately-held political beliefs in 30 seconds of inane chatter, like a nightmare version of speed dating. Their lies can be heard echoing round pubs, newsagents, workplaces, dole offices and echo chambers all over the kingdom.

There is no escape. I am stuck in election hell, for another two weeks.  I can understand why so many early-voters die in between voting and election day, just to get away from it all. Even UKIP don’t pester the dead.

People like myself, the early voters, should be excused from all this. We should have separate TV channels that don’t mention the election, websites that concentrate on the real news, a separate section set up on abctales guaranteed to be free from ‘hilarious’ political satire and stickers to put on our doors and windows saying ‘I’ve voted already – fuck off!’

And not just our own TV stations and internet, we shouldn’t have to share buses, trains and workplaces with people that haven’t voted, all that TALK. All those OPINIONS.

Maybe we could all go to an island, just for two weeks, somewhere isolated, abandoned, somewhere where the residents aren’t even aware there’s an election going on, where’s there’s no internet, the newspapers are all last year’s and where no politician visits or leaflets.