Lol, you cannot "encourage" yourself to do something. You do it or you don't. If "encouraging oneself" is outlawed, then "thinking" or "reaching a conclusion" is effectively outlawed as well. And that's completely ridiculous. I agree that this is an unfortunate way to end an election, but come on. A person can do to their vote whatever they please.
The point of the restriction on campaigning for invalidation is that people should not feel pressured by others to undermine their own democratic right. That's the sense I have gotten over the years.
If we're being perfectly honest though, my preference for freedom of speech actually makes me wonder if we should ban the practice of campaigning for invalidation in the first place. Either way though, spoiling your own ballot is a democratic right that is not prohibited by the letter of the law.
Are there any first world democracies with freedom of speech guarantees that allow people in a polling place to looknover your vote and make sure you vote the right way? And if there was, you support allowinh that half wayvthrough the counting process? That's crazy.
I don't support changing the law halfway through an election, Napoleon. But someone who votes on Sunday night can obviously base their decision on how others have voted as well, yet that's not discouraged. Strategic voting happens, yet there's nothing we can do about that. I just think it's silly to limit communications because "everyone can see how people vote!" Proving that someone has campaigned for invalidation is difficult, and, in the case of some at-large elections, informing someone that they might want to consider invalidating their vote could actually help that individual see the outcome they would have preferred in the first place. Our voting system isn't great, but the "visible vote" encourages a unique style of politics that we just can't separate from Atlasia. Having strange regulations on campaigning and communication around invalidating ballots is, to me, like trying to fill a hole in the hull of a ship that has a million other holes anyway.
