Curse Of The Secret Ballot

Oh dear. Another one of these things looms.

I have even less of import to say about the British election than I did about the US election, but seeing this news got me to thinking. I hail from the one country and have been confined to quarters in the other for a few years, and it occurs to me that I have no idea how I've actually been voting the last few times voting was called for. I was going to vote by mail but - once again, the eternal question - really, who gives a fuck? So I took the lazy man's way out and signed my vote over to a random family member, who will presumably get to vote twice next month as a consequence, as I routinely forget to specify a preference. I may have mumbled something about voting for Blair at one point, but as to whether that happened I am clueless.

The question is, if I told my father to vote for Michael Howard (or regional equivalent) on my behalf next month, would he actually go through with it? After the shouting, the recriminations, the writing me out of the will - all of which would be unavoidable in such circumstances - would he actually pull the lever, or punch the ticket, or whatever? If there were some way of checking how I voted after the fact, I might consider doing this as a test of familial loyalty.