(no subject)

[djm4_lj]

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.

Comments

[a-musing-amazon.livejournal.com]

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.