Alternative vote

Going back many years to my school days, the headmaster had this strange idea of having forms (registration class) with mixed years. I think the idea was that senior years were to be the mentor of the junior years. It never worked, the different years rarely talked to each other.

Another great idea was the school council. Once a month, a representative from each form attended a meeting to bring forward suggestions, grievances etc. This representative was selected from the senior year of each form.

The first day of my final year came and the form had to select a representative. There were four of us and we were asked to nominate someone. The two people in front of me nominated each other out of spite. My turn came and I nominated Dave who had not turned up that morning. This was deemed to be unfair so my nomination was discounted and fortunately for me, I was out of the running.

As we had not been able to select a candidate, the form teacher sent the two candidates out of the room and we had a vote. The form teacher asked “Who wants Kevin” and there was a mass display of voter apathy, not a single person moved or bothered looking up form their books.

The form teacher whined “Oh come on, at least try to make an effort” and then asked “who wants Brian”. Moved by the emotional plea, a couple of people raised their hands. Brian was now the duly elected member for Form 10.

The funny thing is that Brian never attended any of these lunchtime council meetings – he used to go home for lunch. No one ever mentioned it to him.

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