What would happen if no one voted in the 2024 General Election

Picture the scenario, tonight at 10pm the polls close and voting for the 2024 general election comes to an end.

But in such an apathetic UK, literally nobody has bothered to show up and cast a vote, meaning that absolutely zero votes have been cast.

The exit poll comes in and confused newsreaders across the country say that they really could not call the verdict at all because nobody even voted.

A whole night's fascinating coverage of people counting crosses on sheets of paper in church halls and school gyms is going to get junked, but what takes its place?

Imagine if there was a general election and literally nobody showed up to vote. (Getty Stock Photo)

Since every single constituency vote would have resulted in a tie, albeit a tie on zero votes, then all of the candidates who stood for the seat would end up having to draw lots to see who won.

At every vote count, there'd be a scramble to find votes of any description, and to go through the spoiled ballots to see if there's anything that could be interpreted as a vote for a particular party.

If there's still been no votes cast in the election, then it's back to drawing lots to figure out the winner.

All across the UK, a lack of votes would result in every constituency being decided by the drawing of lots, meaning the number of MPs each party had would depend largely on how many candidates they'd stood overall and the luck of the draw.

Take, for example, prime minister Rishi Sunak's Richmond and Northallerton constituency where there are 13 candidates vying for the seat.

Sunak would have to draw lots alongside rivals from the likes of Labour and the Liberal Democrats, along with Count Binface and a representative of the Monster Raving Loony Party.

You can either vote and do your bit for democracy, or it can be entirely out of your hands. (Getty Stock Photo)

This approach would still favour the largest parties as they're standing in the most places, and on the balance of probability, would have the most MPs at the end of the very random process.

However, it's unlikely that any party would have the requisite 326 seats needed to form a majority, resulting in a hung parliament with a very difficult patchwork of parties.

MPs from Labour, the Conservatives and the Lib Dems would likely still be the biggest groups but they'd be alongside MPs from all sorts of parties that wouldn't normally have a chance of winning.

In short, if nobody voted in the general election it'd be absolute chaos, every candidate would get their seat based on pure luck and we might not even be able to form a working or coherent government at the end of it.

Luckily, people have been casting their votes at the general election so that won't happen.