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The UK follows the US's lead in making voting fraud easier. Or one more reason why I won't be voting Labour, no matter how scared I am of a Michael Howard government (*). It's not the fact that the fraud was perpetrated by Labour in this case - as the article rightly points out, "other experts say the fraud is not confined to particular communities, or to Birmingham, or to the Labour Party" - it's the fact that it was Labour who brought in the rules to allow more people to vote by post, without any of the safeguards that such a move needs.

My freedom is not safe in the hands of these people.

Edit: (*) for the record, I'll be voting Lib Dem unless something very unexpected happens between now and then. But I'm expecting the 'anyone but Michael Howard' campaign to do a similar thing to the 'anyone but Bush' one in the US, and try to persuade people that voting for any aprty other than Labour is effectively a vote for the Tories. Which may have some validity, but tough.

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you could vote lib dem??

I will. I've been a Lib Dem supporter as long as there's been a party, and was a member of the Liberal Party before that.

I'll be voting Lib Dem. For me they are the only choice - I can't vote for Blair because of the war, the lies, the attacks on civil liberties and the constitution; I can't vote for the Tories because they are equally bad and Michael Howard should never be PM.

Also, I think we really need PR to curb overweening parties with big majorities that allow them to do as they like.

Soph

You may like this news then (Labour candidate defects to Lib Dems because Labour is becoming too authoritarian)

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1344805.html

That seems to have vanished but I assume it's about the Ribble Valley PPC whose defection formed part of the Manchester LD press conference today -- on the BBC site at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/frontpage/4411185.stm

Although only the cases in Birmingham were brought before an electoral court (ahuh ... special procedure and part of the reason they happen so infrequently) I have seen many party-internal emails about similar issues in other places but which had insufficient evidence available to proceed with an action.

The scary thing with Birmingham, of course, is it wasn't a part of the all-postal 'experiment' and given that bribery of postal workers was also a part of these cases it makes one seriously worry about how bad those areas might have been ...

I can't see how you could realistically prevent - or even reliably detect - fraud in postal voting. Individual registration might make life a little harder for large-scale fraud, but preventing people being intimidated to vote a particular way is pretty much impossible, and being sure that you've detected any that's happened after the fact is very, very hard indeed. If you can intimidate someone to vote a particular way you can probably also intimidate them not to rat you out.

I can't believe that the idea of a secret ballot has evaporated, and not even the LibDems are arguing for its return!

We haven't had a secret ballot for many years - all the papers are numbered against the counterfoils and the numbers noted down so it is possible to trace an individual vote to the elector. Or course, they are not supposed to do this, but...

Soph

it *is* a secret ballot though, indeed without those numbered counterfoils a vote won't get counted (and that happens quite often, indeed where someone crosses out the number on the back there vote will be considered 'spoiled' no matter how clear their intention)

The reason is straight-forwardly to prevent fraud as - on application to a court after the end of the ballot - a check can be made to see who actually voted. The Birmingham case would have relied on this. About four weeks after the election - if there are no appeals - the slips are destroyed and never checked against the lists. Even when they are used it is usually to check the voter's numbers rather than for whom they voted (one reason why the ballot number and official mark are on the opposite side)

The fact that usually they don't doesn't mean they can't, and therefore it isn't actually secret. Also, it is well known that in the 1960s and 1970s the security services did ocassionally make illegal use of this to find out who voted for certain 'fringe' parties. I know that numbers are a fraud prevention device but they do have this additional feature, sorry bug.

Over in Ireland, where they use broadly similar voting methods to us, I understand they abolished the numbers because of concerns over this very issue.

first bit: :: nods :: it is an imperfect system with or without imho

second bit: ah yes, the country that invented "Vote Early, Vote Often" ;-P

actually, ireland has it right in respect of carrying a ballot box around to the elderly, etc. so that they can still cast their ballot in person rather than trust the mail ...

It only really works with tiny parties: you can see who cast a particular vote much more easily than finding out how a particular someone voted. In the former, you've got the ballot paper + reference no and it's a quick search to find out whose it is, but in the latter, you've got an awful lot of ballot papers to look through to find the right one...

It was done to help convict a Tory owner of an old people's home who got proxy votes for some of hir residents without bothering to ask them about it though.

oh we (LD) definitely do want to retain the secret ballot (and so do the ERS which has rather a large number of LDs in, including many of current ctte) but it is a difficult path to tread as many people now seem to feel that going along to use a voting booth - which is open for 14 hours - is too much like hard work or 'a bother' so a method of getting people re-involved is still needed until people realise that the verify-and-trace-ability of the paper chase that is litle bits of paper marked with a pencil in private with no-one looking over your shoulder is the best and most secure way of casting your ballot.

We are also still for bringing in electoral reform asap too ...

*grin* So you're saying that restricting postal votes to ensure a secret ballot is the Right Thing to do, but because it won't be popular and will reduce turnout, you're not calling for it to be done?

indeed. I'm a would-be politician!

seriously though, many people are bored by and anti the whole "democracy" thing and think it makes no difference (even though it eriously does). Arguably, it is local elections not national elections that make most difference to us as individuals, but that gets even fewer people motivated.

I've had a permanent postal vote for nearly 16 years, originally because of work taking me away from home at short notice. To my mind, "I can't be bothered to go to the polling booth in my sub-ward" should not be a valid reason for a postal vote.

God almighty. We really do get the government we deserve.

I've lived in a different place for every general election in which I've been eligible to vote. On all occasions, the polling booth has been within half a mile (and in one case within a hundred yards), open well before it's time to go to work, and well after I've got home, and there have never been any significant queues.

It really is not difficult to vote.

My mind boggles that people can be so f*cking lazy, so f*cking ungrateful that they have the right to vote, and so f*cking selfish that they don't exercise the *duty* that goes with that right.

Arseholes, the lot of them.

J

The problem is that there are legitimate reasons why some people can only use a postal vote: for example, if I'm to vote I'll need a postal ballot - I'm due at the hospital at 7:30 am on the 5th May to have an operation the same day. So although I think postal votes shouldn't be encouraged as the default way to cast your vote (as this government seems to want), they do need to be made available where there are good reasons and we do need to seek ways of making them more resistant to fraud. For a start, they should make it a criminal offence to falsify a ballot and we should replace household registration with individual registration.

The ballot papers seized by the police from the warehouse were handed over to election officials, who decided they had no reason to reject them and included them in the count.

*boggle*

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