I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
500, isn't it?
And in 2019, there were 12 seats where that heist would have been enough to swing the result. (Yes in Coventry South, no in Moray, fact fans.)
And in 2024, there will be a similar number of hypermarginals, except they will be different seats, depending on the national picture. And if you know which ones they will be in advance, I think we'd all appreciate a header here.
If you want to fiddle the results of an election, there are routes with a much better risk:reward ratio. Trying to persuade the Boundary Commission of the merits of your plans for one.
Older contributors may remember the days when the electoral register took ages to update. There was a qualifying date in October and it didn't come into force till the following February. It would have been much easier to personate then because poll cards would come for the previous occupants and you could just "borrow" one of the right sex....unless I suppose they had a postal vote and there was cross checking.
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
I think it's probably just an embarrassing gaffe. But it's funny.
No that is how stupid he is , just what you would expect from an absolute donkey.
It’s beginning to go his way though isn’t it? 😦
I don't think so , Mr Continuity and they just announced they have misplaced 50,000 members as well as the £600K. More like he is heading for the toilet.
I’m not saying he should win. But what polling there has been consistently gives him a tidy lead now, doesn’t it?
Querying that. Mustn’t include the Tube, which is still a railway.
"Underground" surely. The Tube is the deep stuff buried down below the rest, isn't it? Lots more Underground higher up, e.g. the bit that trundles out on the surface past the RAF Museum and Polis kindergarten at Hendon.
Edity: and no idea if tyhat now includes the EL in popular parlance ...
At Whitechapel the London Overground passes underneath the London Underground.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
500, isn't it?
And in 2019, there were 12 seats where that heist would have been enough to swing the result. (Yes in Coventry South, no in Moray, fact fans.)
And in 2024, there will be a similar number of hypermarginals, except they will be different seats, depending on the national picture. And if you know which ones they will be in advance, I think we'd all appreciate a header here.
If you want to fiddle the results of an election, there are routes with a much better risk:reward ratio. Trying to persuade the Boundary Commission of the merits of your plans for one.
Sorry yes 500, however you can just recruit more people and it stacks up. Also for those saying who would risk prison....well offer an illegal 100 quid for a nights work they would bite your hand off likely and you aren't one of the ones going into vote so as long as they dont know your name. You are paying 1000 quid per 500 votes.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
We’re well overdue a good old French mass-demonstration/civil commotion. With all our strikes this winter I was starting to feel they were losing their edge, but now they have an opportunity to prove me wrong.
Dominic Raab MP repeatedly reduced staff to tears and "ruined people's lives" through "coercive behaviour", according to officials who worked with him.
Sky's @BethRigby spoke to former colleagues of Dominic Raab MP ⏬
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
A child at my daughters school is Ukrainian (refugee) and doing various charitable things to help the cause back home. She setup a funding page for a young lady who had lost her leg in battle - to buy a funky electronic limb. When the page was forwarded onto various people, there was a reaction of "that's gross" from some.
As in, if it had been a man, there would have been no problem. But the sight of a 20 something young woman with a leg missing was OTT.
Even though some of the negative comments were from women, I still say this sounds sexist. Thoughts?
Probably depends on whether "As in, if it had been a man, there would have been no problem" is what they said, or what came into your mind when you saw someone expressing distress at the sight of a mutilated human body. If the latter, perhaps the problem doesn't lie with the people who found it distressing.
They actually said, in couple of cases, that it was "wrong" because it was a woman.
This wasn't expressed to me - it was to the young lady doing the charitable fund raising.
Well in that case, I don't think there should have been any need for you to ask whether it was sexist!
But it wasn't clear from what you posted in the first place whether they had said that, or whether it was your interpretation. I think it's pretty common for people to find it distressing to see images of a mutilated human body, for understandable reasons.
I find it interesting that my daughter cohort - teenagers - want full equality. They were having a discussion about how conscription in Ukraine being men only was wrong.
A couple of parents overheard, and the reaction from the adults was “that’s wrong”
Dominic Raab MP repeatedly reduced staff to tears and "ruined people's lives" through "coercive behaviour", according to officials who worked with him.
Sky's @BethRigby spoke to former colleagues of Dominic Raab MP ⏬
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
A child at my daughters school is Ukrainian (refugee) and doing various charitable things to help the cause back home. She setup a funding page for a young lady who had lost her leg in battle - to buy a funky electronic limb. When the page was forwarded onto various people, there was a reaction of "that's gross" from some.
As in, if it had been a man, there would have been no problem. But the sight of a 20 something young woman with a leg missing was OTT.
Even though some of the negative comments were from women, I still say this sounds sexist. Thoughts?
Probably depends on whether "As in, if it had been a man, there would have been no problem" is what they said, or what came into your mind when you saw someone expressing distress at the sight of a mutilated human body. If the latter, perhaps the problem doesn't lie with the people who found it distressing.
They actually said, in couple of cases, that it was "wrong" because it was a woman.
This wasn't expressed to me - it was to the young lady doing the charitable fund raising.
Well in that case, I don't think there should have been any need for you to ask whether it was sexist!
But it wasn't clear from what you posted in the first place whether they had said that, or whether it was your interpretation. I think it's pretty common for people to find it distressing to see images of a mutilated human body, for understandable reasons.
I find it interesting that my daughter cohort - teenagers - want full equality. They were having a discussion about how conscription in Ukraine being men only was wrong.
A couple of parents overheard, and the reaction from the adults was “that’s wrong”
Good on the girls for having principles. It's a considerable improvement on the Waspi women campaign: all for equal rights up to the exact point that it ain't to our advantage.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
Dominic Raab MP repeatedly reduced staff to tears and "ruined people's lives" through "coercive behaviour", according to officials who worked with him.
Sky's @BethRigby spoke to former colleagues of Dominic Raab MP ⏬
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
I think it's probably just an embarrassing gaffe. But it's funny.
No that is how stupid he is , just what you would expect from an absolute donkey.
It’s beginning to go his way though isn’t it? 😦
I don't think so , Mr Continuity and they just announced they have misplaced 50,000 members as well as the £600K. More like he is heading for the toilet.
I’m not saying he should win. But what polling there has been consistently gives him a tidy lead now, doesn’t it?
My own understanding is that it's thought to be quite close, though with Yousaf ahead - but there are a lot of undecideds, along with questions as to whether Forbes might win off the back of the redistribution of Regan's second preferences.
FWIW I think the members should pay attention to what available information there is about the mood of the wider electorate, and to the strategies advocated by the candidates, and go for Forbes. She appeals more to non-SNP voters than Yousaf, and it's the non-SNP voters that need to be reached out to if they're ever to achieve their primary political objective. She's also identified that a stronger economy, more than a progressive social agenda, is needed to win over more converts to independence - though of course there'll be arguments over whether or not changes which tack significantly rightwards are the best way to achieve this.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
Think of the betting opportunities, though...
(Besides, what we really want an electoral system to do is accurately reflect the views of the electorate, isn't it? My concern about the ID thing is that it will make the results less reflective, in order to counter a fraud that doesn't actually seem to happen.)
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Isn’t that dependent on Constable Savage actually being present?
Or is it open season on the streets for loud shirts in built up areas on Election Day?
Completely OT. My Uber driver told me yesterday that as of the start of next year no Diesel cars would be allowed to drive for Uber. (He didn't know whether this just applied in France). Furthermore no Diesel cars at all would be allowed to drive into or through Nice.
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
Third, don’t obfuscate when it comes to the nation’s finances: tell it as it is. Which right now will mean blaming everything on Westminster, time after time after time. Nothing less than this will do.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
Completely OT. My Uber driver told me yesterday that as of the start of next year no Diesel cars would be allowed to drive for Uber. (He didn't know whether this just applied in France). Furthermore no Diesel cars at all would be allowed to drive into or through Nice.
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
Note to all that wild garlic (or ramsons, if you like) is out in force at the mo. Like nettles, these leaves can be picked with guiltless abandon (but taste better and don't sting). Roughly chopped into plain rice with a little salt, it makes for an excellent, simple side dish - and the flowers that will appear next month make for a nice (tasty) garnish.
Guiltless abandon - unless on private land, or a protected wildlife site.
As it is an ancient woodland indicator, that might a significant number of the places it grows.
Not a fan of the 'foraging' business for various reasons.
Not sure what the scare quotes are for. And really - it's a very hardy and recurrent plant that grows like topsy all over the shop. It's not like you need loads.
Allium ursinum may well be locally dominant where it grows but many other things on foragers lists aren't so robust or common. Encouraging the phenomenon seems like a bad idea.
We (being the county plant recorders) have had requests from professional foragers asking 'do you know where any X grows locally' - including from someone who was allegedly making a programme with Ainsley Harriot. They wanted to find a particular plant that isn't that common locally (although it does grow in our nearest woods - a SSSI). They were told to look elsewhere, although I've no idea what they actually did in the end.
It isn't really foraging if you are harvesting for profit, either through selling to restaurants or selling courses. It is definitely not foraging if you have to ask where to find things!
It's one thing to get a little for oneself. Quite another to collect whole sacksful for the restaurant trade.
Depends. If it's on private land then yes ofc. But if it is growing on the common then why not?
Because the incentive is to take as much as possible and this can mean the plant dies out. Tragedy of the Commons. As with fishing.
Yes no I get that but it is what it is. If it is on common land then it is available for the commoners.
But the Commons was always highly-regulated and litigated. There were loads of disputes about so-and-so putting four sheep onto the Common when they only had commonage rights to graze three, or taking too much wood, etc, etc. It was never a free for all.
Completely OT. My Uber driver told me yesterday that as of the start of next year no Diesel cars would be allowed to drive for Uber. (He didn't know whether this just applied in France). Furthermore no Diesel cars at all would be allowed to drive into or through Nice.
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
I’ll believe it when it happens:
The company announced today (8 September) [2017] that its drivers would be banned from using vehicles in London that aren’t fully electric or hybrid from the end of 2019, as part of a 100% transition to electric vehicles (EVs) across the UK by the end of 2022.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
Think of the betting opportunities, though...
(Besides, what we really want an electoral system to do is accurately reflect the views of the electorate, isn't it? My concern about the ID thing is that it will make the results less reflective, in order to counter a fraud that doesn't actually seem to happen.)
Voter personation is immediately apparent because electors turn up at polling stations only to find that their vote has already been cast by persons unknown. That was evident in Northern Ireland at the time of "vote early, vote often". There is literally no evidence of something similar happening here, yet the Conservatives are about to make it really difficult for about 2 million people to vote.
Only 5%? That is a very substantial permanent pay cut. "Good" for whom?
The national average payrise is 6%. £1655 about an additional 4% on top of the 5% headline rise for the average NHS worker, so in total a 9% rise ie more than the national average rise over the last year
Oh come on. You know full well the £1,655 is a one-off, not consolidated, and to add 4% on to the 5% to make 9% is a ludicrous sleight of hand.
Completely OT. My Uber driver told me yesterday that as of the start of next year no Diesel cars would be allowed to drive for Uber. (He didn't know whether this just applied in France). Furthermore no Diesel cars at all would be allowed to drive into or through Nice.
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
hmmmm
given something like 80% of french cars run on diesel that would be a brave move
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
Completely OT. My Uber driver told me yesterday that as of the start of next year no Diesel cars would be allowed to drive for Uber. (He didn't know whether this just applied in France). Furthermore no Diesel cars at all would be allowed to drive into or through Nice.
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
I’ll believe it when it happens:
The company announced today (8 September) [2017] that its drivers would be banned from using vehicles in London that aren’t fully electric or hybrid from the end of 2019, as part of a 100% transition to electric vehicles (EVs) across the UK by the end of 2022.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
Completely OT. My Uber driver told me yesterday that as of the start of next year no Diesel cars would be allowed to drive for Uber. (He didn't know whether this just applied in France). Furthermore no Diesel cars at all would be allowed to drive into or through Nice.
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
hmmmm
given something like 80% of french cars run on diesel that would be a brave move
Macron is just getting going on pissing off the French with his pension stuff....
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
Pagan, this is just silly. You are trying to find the most difficult ways to commit crimes when easier ones are available. It is like a shoplifter going in a shop naked just to prove he can do it. It is pointless.
If you are going to go down this route you might as well also say IDs are useless because they can be forged so you still need something else.
It is all nonsense.
Voter fraud at the polling station can happen but is very rare. Postal voter fraud does happen. Therefore Governments should focus their attention on stopping the latter.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
As a rule, the more people involved in a conspiracy, the more likely to be caught.
If you want to fix elections, then do it with postal votes. It is a no brainer.
Voter ID should be accompanied by an end to postal and proxy voting. Allow early voting in person at council officers for those planning to be away.
Completely OT. My Uber driver told me yesterday that as of the start of next year no Diesel cars would be allowed to drive for Uber. (He didn't know whether this just applied in France). Furthermore no Diesel cars at all would be allowed to drive into or through Nice.
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
hmmmm
given something like 80% of french cars run on diesel that would be a brave move
That would explain the Gallic shrug when I asked what the diesel drivers would do.....
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
IANAL but that probably aggravates the offence if you coerce vulnerable people into helping you.
A long long time ago I was an illicit sub-tenant in someone else's flat and therefore kept my name off the electoral register to deflect suspicion. But when a general election came along I felt entitled to vote, so I shambled along to the polling station with the legitimate tenant's polling card and did the dirty deed. I must have looked as guilty as hell: red face, sweaty forehead, palpitations etc. I am not by temperament a natural criminal.
So that was how I risked imprisonment to vote for the 'longest suicide note in history'. Never again.
In all seriousness a team effort and the best infrastructure leaders I've ever worked with, including some (most) who had fantastic integrity and great personal values.
Things not going well in Local Government, and the £1.2k per day 'Commissioners' being sent in to fix 'failing Councils'. The most well known and respected commissioner, Max Caller, has announced that he wants to retire from public life, and another involved in the running of Slough Council has stepped down citing personal reasons, this is after a series of reports indicating little progress in the Council's where 'intervention' is taking place, including Slough.
The whole thing is an expensive and farcical diversion from government facing up to the reality of its own failing and contradictory policy towards local government for over a decade. I do wonder how their recruitment drive for new Inspectors is going.
SNP today: Party members as of February 15 = 72,186
Shout out to the SNP press office, which told me - on February 21 - that the membership number "shouldn't be too far off our latest published number, which was just over 100k (103,884 members)"
And why do you think SNP leadership has opted to obfuscate (at best) or lie (to the press) about the decline?
Lot of the troughers from the train wreck of Labour suddenly joined I suspect and obviously they were hoping to keep something up their sleeve given it was likely Useless would make a hash of things as usual and need rescuing.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
IANAL but that probably aggravates the offence if you coerce vulnerable people into helping you.
Paying people is hardly coercing them.....were you coerced to work in the city because you were paid?
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
I think it's probably just an embarrassing gaffe. But it's funny.
No that is how stupid he is , just what you would expect from an absolute donkey.
It’s beginning to go his way though isn’t it? 😦
I don't think so , Mr Continuity and they just announced they have misplaced 50,000 members as well as the £600K. More like he is heading for the toilet.
I’m not saying he should win. But what polling there has been consistently gives him a tidy lead now, doesn’t it?
Nothing yet that he has over 50% and for sure he will not get transfers, but likliehood is he will be gifted it.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
IANAL but that probably aggravates the offence if you coerce vulnerable people into helping you.
Paying people is hardly coercing them.....were you coerced to work in the city because you were paid?
But peanuts, I bet, since you know they can't bargain. No, you're going down hard if caught.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
IANAL but that probably aggravates the offence if you coerce vulnerable people into helping you.
Having been an agent I wouldn't want to be one in Pagan's ward. You also have an election expenses issue to add to the crime sheet I'm guessing as I'm guessing you are not declaring the wages and by this stage don't give a toss anyway. The agent is looking at a nice stretch I imagine.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
You're going full MAGA now. There's a job waiting for you in the Texas Republican Party.
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
Things not going well in Local Government, and the £1.2k per day 'Commissioners' being sent in to fix 'failing Councils'. The most well known and respected commissioner, Max Caller, has announced that he wants to retire from public life, and another involved in the running of Slough Council has stepped down citing personal reasons, this is after a series of reports indicating little progress in the Council's where 'intervention' is taking place, including Slough.
The whole thing is an expensive and farcical diversion from government facing up to the reality of its own failing and contradictory policy towards local government for over a decade. I do wonder how their recruitment drive for new Inspectors is going.
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
I think it's probably just an embarrassing gaffe. But it's funny.
No that is how stupid he is , just what you would expect from an absolute donkey.
It’s beginning to go his way though isn’t it? 😦
I don't think so , Mr Continuity and they just announced they have misplaced 50,000 members as well as the £600K. More like he is heading for the toilet.
I’m not saying he should win. But what polling there has been consistently gives him a tidy lead now, doesn’t it?
Nothing yet that he has over 50% and for sure he will not get transfers, but likliehood is he will be gifted it.
The Kate Forbes campaign amounts to a hostile takeover bid. Their demand for a third party to invigilate the count is an undeclared declaration of war on Murrell. Its no wonder the SNP establishment is circling the wagons. Extraordinary really.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
IANAL but that probably aggravates the offence if you coerce vulnerable people into helping you.
Having been an agent I wouldn't want to be one in Pagan's ward. You also have an election expenses issue to add to the crime sheet I'm guessing as I'm guessing you are not declaring the wages and by this stage don't give a toss anyway. The agent is looking at a nice stretch I imagine.
Which part of "if you wanted to do it you could and you dont care if its illegal" are you missing? Your comeback is pretty much zero if you work through illegals that never know your name. So say as I have shown you pay an illegal 100 for the day 1000 gets you 500 votes.
Now scale that up a little for 100K you can get 5000 votes in ten target constituencies. Many are willing to donate far more than 100k to a political party. If someone wanted to they could actually throw a fair few constituencies will little chance of comeback
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
IANAL but that probably aggravates the offence if you coerce vulnerable people into helping you.
Paying people is hardly coercing them.....were you coerced to work in the city because you were paid?
But peanuts, I bet, since you know they can't bargain. No, you're going down hard if caught.
As long as they don't know your name or face how are you getting caught?
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
You're going full MAGA now. There's a job waiting for you in the Texas Republican Party.
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
The UK government is expected to publish its proposals in May 2023 regarding the increase the stage pension age from 67 to 68.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
You're going full MAGA now. There's a job waiting for you in the Texas Republican Party.
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
Nah, full MAGA is saying that the results didn't match the votes cast, which is absurd nonsense.
2 million is a ridiculous exaggeration. But then so is calling the three-minute form "very high hoops".
Why don't you care about the security of the ballot?
If you want to sort out the security of the ballot then do something about postal voting, not In Person ID fraud. But of course the Tories won't do anything about that because it would effect voter turnout amongst their strongest demographic.
As @theSNP President I have told the National Secretary I support publishing membership figures. I also have full confidence in her & the external verification & count. I am disgusted by the abuse directed at @theSNP staff by individuals who damage our cause & aid our enemies
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
The UK government is expected to publish its proposals in May 2023 regarding the increase the stage pension age from 67 to 68.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
When the pension age for men was set at 65 in 1925, average male life expectancy was 57. Life expectancy for men didn't exceed pension age until 1948.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
The UK government is expected to publish its proposals in May 2023 regarding the increase the stage pension age from 67 to 68.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
When the pension age for men was set at 65 in 1925, average male life expectancy was 57. Life expectancy for men didn't exceed pension age until 1948.
Now that the figure has been released (72,186 SNP members) let's look at the financial crisis that is looming for the SNP even if the police don't take action on the missing £600K.
The SNP are accustomed to spending big in election years & replenishing the coffers in off years.
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
I think it's probably just an embarrassing gaffe. But it's funny.
No that is how stupid he is , just what you would expect from an absolute donkey.
It’s beginning to go his way though isn’t it? 😦
I don't think so , Mr Continuity and they just announced they have misplaced 50,000 members as well as the £600K. More like he is heading for the toilet.
I’m not saying he should win. But what polling there has been consistently gives him a tidy lead now, doesn’t it?
Nothing yet that he has over 50% and for sure he will not get transfers, but likliehood is he will be gifted it.
It’s really not the end of the world for Scottish independence Malcolm, if SNP slip out of Scottish government for an opposition counter attack position. especially as the three candidates can’t articulate or appear to believe in a route to a referendum any time soon, can’t they?
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
I think it's probably just an embarrassing gaffe. But it's funny.
No that is how stupid he is , just what you would expect from an absolute donkey.
It’s beginning to go his way though isn’t it? 😦
I don't think so , Mr Continuity and they just announced they have misplaced 50,000 members as well as the £600K. More like he is heading for the toilet.
I’m not saying he should win. But what polling there has been consistently gives him a tidy lead now, doesn’t it?
Nothing yet that he has over 50% and for sure he will not get transfers, but likliehood is he will be gifted it.
The Kate Forbes campaign amounts to a hostile takeover bid. Their demand for a third party to invigilate the count is an undeclared declaration of war on Murrell. Its no wonder the SNP establishment is circling the wagons. Extraordinary really.
Yes it looks like they are in trouble , what a clear out it will be if Calamity Useless does not get it. Unlikely now that Murrell can be sole counter of the votes.
I’ve decided to carry on drinking wine and do nothing but watch football with dear gooner Gf And read tomorrows race cards and tips in the morning.
Before I put the pad down Have we been distracted from flagging up polls? Was crap Delta Work for the Tories posted when I was looking elsewhere? Added to the recent Omnisisis, means majority of pollsters report Tory drop this week compared to their previous.
What does it currently say graphically? when I look at the end of the graph, the Tory line appears to me to resemble someone pissing up a wall, presumably because they don’t like the writing on it - look at it for yourself, so I suggest that clear vertical upward blue streaming line Tories currently getting relief from on the end there is under subject to be failing downward again very soon.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
You're going full MAGA now. There's a job waiting for you in the Texas Republican Party.
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
People are suspicious of government motives because we see the government taking a frankly intrusive approach to tackling a source of potential electoral fraud that, if it happens at all, has no evidence of it happening in result-shifting amounts. Whilst doing nothing about postal votes, where I think we're pretty confident that there's a bigger problem.
It's like protecting your house by putting a rottweiler in the front garden while leaving the back door open and unlocked.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
And then prison. You are going to get caught on one of those attempts.
Unlikely you are going to get caught tbh, at worst its going to be "According to our list you already voted" and you walk out
Nope you can get caught easily and it doesn't have to be that the person has already voted. It is not well known but parties can appoint polling agents to oversee the voting. We did just that where we thought this was happening and made 2 challenges. One was genuine. The other was spooked and did a runner. He could easily have been caught. We had canvas data to rely on. Also the person whose vote is being stolen could be known to the polling staff in a smaller ward. There is often a police presence around more significant polling stations and you don't want to do this at a minor polling station because you are bound to get caught. If it happens the information will be passed on to other polling stations. You will also probably go to prison. It is taken seriously.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
A polling agent is going to do what exactly to catch them and prosecute? They don't know who the guy really is...they can't stop him leaving. Avoid stations with a police presence and your chances of being prosecuted are basically zero
I'm sorry Pagan but you are talking about stuff you don't know about. The polling agent is allowed to witness the voting. All parties can appoint polling agents. It is rarely done because there isn't usually an issue. They can sit there with their canvas data. if they are suspicious of someone they can have them challenged and that person can be arrested there and then.
Yes the polling agent can sit there and challenge and stop them voting, the guy does a runner however the polling agent does what? Your premise is the guy will be prosecuted so no one would do it. The polling agent interfering is going to do nothing to bring that about they don't know his real identity or where he lives.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
You have usually at least two polling clerks, voters and tellers as well as the polling agent and if you are putting a polling agent in it is usually because you are suspicious it is happening so often there is a policeman then and you think there is no chance this person is going to get arrested.
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
No I wouldn't but if I wanted to do it I wouldn't be doing it in person I would use illegals and pay them and they wouldn't know who hired them
IANAL but that probably aggravates the offence if you coerce vulnerable people into helping you.
Having been an agent I wouldn't want to be one in Pagan's ward. You also have an election expenses issue to add to the crime sheet I'm guessing as I'm guessing you are not declaring the wages and by this stage don't give a toss anyway. The agent is looking at a nice stretch I imagine.
Which part of "if you wanted to do it you could and you dont care if its illegal" are you missing? Your comeback is pretty much zero if you work through illegals that never know your name. So say as I have shown you pay an illegal 100 for the day 1000 gets you 500 votes.
Now scale that up a little for 100K you can get 5000 votes in ten target constituencies. Many are willing to donate far more than 100k to a political party. If someone wanted to they could actually throw a fair few constituencies will little chance of comeback
This really is utter nonsense Pagan. As @Foxy points out you are into one hell of a conspiracy here. You have the donor, the parson organising the criminal gang and training them, the transport, acquisition of the marked register for which you have to identify yourself and apply in writing (bit of a give away) and can be refused. The register then has to be worked on and sheets of who the criminals are going to vote as and at what polling stations prepared. This is assuming you are working off one marked register, which would be an unreliable source for non voters. There is also the annual churn of voters (movers, deaths, new 18 year olds) and if at a general election and using 2 marked registers you are looking at probably 8 years of churn.
The idea that this is all done without the local party's knowledge is farcical. No agent or candidate is going to risk his freedom.
There wasn’t much furore when the pension age was increased previously . Brits seemed to be quite pragmatic about this . It didn’t really become an election issue, almost as if saying you were against this meant you weren’t facing reality .
I’m not so sure this pragmatism will survive this time .
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
The UK government is expected to publish its proposals in May 2023 regarding the increase the stage pension age from 67 to 68.
I wonder whether the previous cross party agreement on the pension age might fracture now .
What proposals are they going to publish? It's already law that the pension age will increase to 68.
They'll want to accelerate the process of getting to 68. Nor will that be the end of it. Once they've done that, there'll be another review about introducing a fresh timetable for further ramping, to at least 70 and probably beyond that.
The ever-growing number of pensioners is an enormous burden to the working age taxpayer, and the politicians won't dare to shift any of the burden onto existing oldies (by taxing their asset wealth and/or replacing the triple lock with something less generous.) Thus, the only realistic means left to ameliorate the situation is not only to tell younger workers to keep shelling out more and more in tax to keep the old in the manner to which they have become accustomed, but also to kick their own retirements into an ever-more-distant future.
Things not going well in Local Government, and the £1.2k per day 'Commissioners' being sent in to fix 'failing Councils'. The most well known and respected commissioner, Max Caller, has announced that he wants to retire from public life, and another involved in the running of Slough Council has stepped down citing personal reasons, this is after a series of reports indicating little progress in the Council's where 'intervention' is taking place, including Slough.
The whole thing is an expensive and farcical diversion from government facing up to the reality of its own failing and contradictory policy towards local government for over a decade. I do wonder how their recruitment drive for new Inspectors is going.
I think that Essex County Council have effectively taken over Thurrock as Commissioners.
The absurdity of this is clear - these are senior people with highly responsible roles in their own authority and yet they are expected to take 1-2 days per week to work at another authority.
We also see the "sharing" of senior posts at local authorities as an attempt to save money but for a single individual to be CEO at two Councils isn't practical yet it happens.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
The UK government is expected to publish its proposals in May 2023 regarding the increase the stage pension age from 67 to 68.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
You're going full MAGA now. There's a job waiting for you in the Texas Republican Party.
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
People are suspicious of government motives because we see the government taking a frankly intrusive approach to tackling a source of potential electoral fraud that, if it happens at all, has no evidence of it happening in result-shifting amounts. Whilst doing nothing about postal votes, where I think we're pretty confident that there's a bigger problem.
It's like protecting your house by putting a rottweiler in the front garden while leaving the back door open and unlocked.
More like protecting someone else's house, and then ringing up the local burglars.
In all seriousness a team effort and the best infrastructure leaders I've ever worked with, including some (most) who had fantastic integrity and great personal values.
I’ve decided to carry on drinking wine and do nothing but watch football with dear gooner Gf And read tomorrows race cards and tips in the morning.
Before I put the pad down Have we been distracted from flagging up polls? Was crap Delta Work for the Tories posted when I was looking elsewhere? Added to the recent Omnisisis, means majority of pollsters report Tory drop this week compared to their previous.
What does it currently say graphically? when I look at the end of the graph, the Tory line appears to me to resemble someone pissing up a wall, presumably because they don’t like the writing on it - look at it for yourself, so I suggest that clear vertical upward blue streaming line Tories currently getting relief from on the end there is under subject to be failing downward again very soon.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
You're going full MAGA now. There's a job waiting for you in the Texas Republican Party.
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
Nah, full MAGA is saying that the results didn't match the votes cast, which is absurd nonsense.
2 million is a ridiculous exaggeration. But then so is calling the three-minute form "very high hoops".
Why don't you care about the security of the ballot?
"Absurd nonsense" published by the House of Commons Library is here.
"The Electoral Commission’s Public Opinion Tracker 2022, carried out in February 2022, found that 4% of people in Britain (equivalent to around 1.9m voters) did not have any of the pre-existing forms of photo ID required to vote. The Public Opinion Tracker is a national survey of around 5,000 people."
At the last count, about 1.5% of the estimated number needing to had applied for the necessary documentation. I'll judge the height of the hoops by how many eventually make it through.
I should incidentally have referred to "very high invisible hoops" because too many won't realise they are even there until it's too late.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
The UK government is expected to publish its proposals in May 2023 regarding the increase the stage pension age from 67 to 68.
I wonder whether the previous cross party agreement on the pension age might fracture now .
What proposals are they going to publish? It's already law that the pension age will increase to 68.
They'll want to accelerate the process of getting to 68. Nor will that be the end of it. Once they've done that, there'll be another review about introducing a fresh timetable for further ramping, to at least 70 and probably beyond that.
The ever-growing number of pensioners is an enormous burden to the working age taxpayer, and the politicians won't dare to shift any of the burden onto existing oldies (by taxing their asset wealth and/or replacing the triple lock with something less generous.) Thus, the only realistic means left to ameliorate the situation is not only to tell younger workers to keep shelling out more and more in tax to keep the old in the manner to which they have become accustomed, but also to kick their own retirements into an ever-more-distant future.
The report was finished in September 2022 but the government seem to have forgotten to publish it ! Reminding people about the next increase in pension age during a cost of living increase was something they wanted to avoid for obvious reasons!
I expect it will be published after the May elections !
Well Rome seems to have figured Brexit out, they've got e-gates (which we couldn't use 🥲) and we went through to all passports despite my wife being a Swiss citizen. Hardly anyone there because everyone else went to the e-gates. It was basically how it used to be.
"NEW SNP leadership candidate Humza Yousaf just jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh “where are all the men?” There was polite and awkward laughter before they explained that many of their partners had stayed in Ukraine to fight in the war."
I think it's probably just an embarrassing gaffe. But it's funny.
No that is how stupid he is , just what you would expect from an absolute donkey.
It’s beginning to go his way though isn’t it? 😦
I don't think so , Mr Continuity and they just announced they have misplaced 50,000 members as well as the £600K. More like he is heading for the toilet.
I’m not saying he should win. But what polling there has been consistently gives him a tidy lead now, doesn’t it?
Nothing yet that he has over 50% and for sure he will not get transfers, but likliehood is he will be gifted it.
The Kate Forbes campaign amounts to a hostile takeover bid. Their demand for a third party to invigilate the count is an undeclared declaration of war on Murrell. Its no wonder the SNP establishment is circling the wagons. Extraordinary really.
Yes it looks like they are in trouble , what a clear out it will be if Calamity Useless does not get it. Unlikely now that Murrell can be sole counter of the votes.
Trouble is that there will scarcely be anyone left after the clear out, except for a 32 Yr old First Minister plus a few hasbeens hitherto overlooked by Nicola.
At work today, I've been talking a lot about Pornhub.
To colleagues, verbally, via email, and messaging systems. I've even commissioned a report on Pornhub.
The bits in bold broke me.
MindGeek, one of the world’s largest and most controversial porn companies and the parent company of Pornhub, has been acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, a newly set-up Canadian private equity firm.
The move comes as MindGeek is being sued over sexually-explicit videos of minors found on its so-called tube sites, which much like YouTube rely on users to upload content.
Luxembourg-registered MindGeek has towered over the adult industry since the advent of video streaming. Its most recently published figures show revenues in 2018 reached $460mn while profit margins have at times neared 50 per cent, according to people familiar with the matter.
The identity of MindGeek’s former majority owner Bernd Bergmair — an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who also uses the name Bernard Bergemar — was first revealed by an FT investigation.
MindGeek has since suffered a string of criticism over its business model, causing the departure of its top management team and partial loss of access to the Visa and Mastercard payment networks.
There wasn’t much furore when the pension age was increased previously . Brits seemed to be quite pragmatic about this . It didn’t really become an election issue, almost as if saying you were against this meant you weren’t facing reality .
I’m not so sure this pragmatism will survive this time .
Jacking up state pension age faster + abolishing lifetime allowance = long and bountiful playtime retirement for the rich, financed by flogging the proles til they drop down dead. At least, that's how I expect it to be described by the Government's many enemies - and there's more than a little bit of truth to the accusation.
At work today, I've been talking a lot about Pornhub.
To colleagues, verbally, via email, and messaging systems. I've even commissioned a report on Pornhub.
The bits in bold broke me.
MindGeek, one of the world’s largest and most controversial porn companies and the parent company of Pornhub, has been acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, a newly set-up Canadian private equity firm.
The move comes as MindGeek is being sued over sexually-explicit videos of minors found on its so-called tube sites, which much like YouTube rely on users to upload content.
Luxembourg-registered MindGeek has towered over the adult industry since the advent of video streaming. Its most recently published figures show revenues in 2018 reached $460mn while profit margins have at times neared 50 per cent, according to people familiar with the matter.
The identity of MindGeek’s former majority owner Bernd Bergmair — an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who also uses the name Bernard Bergemar — was first revealed by an FT investigation.
MindGeek has since suffered a string of criticism over its business model, causing the departure of its top management team and partial loss of access to the Visa and Mastercard payment networks.
It would be ironic if a politically-motivated change to voting regulations turned out to harm the Conservatives rather than to aid them.
In practice though, the Conservatives will never allow any change to voting procedures to harm their chances. The 2023 local elections are a dry run. If it were politically expedient, the Conservatives would take the road to Damascus and scrap the change in 2024 or make major changes designed to help the Conservative-supporting segment of the electorate (such as for example allowing time-expired passports to be used.)
The other practical impact of this is that I would expect that in the first parliament of an incoming Labour or Labour-led government there will be a major bill to change the way elections are conducted. That was already on the cards ever since Labour was shafted with the introduction of Individual Electoral Registration. The voter ID legislation makes it inevitable. Labour are utterly fed up with repeated Conservative governments trying to game the system against them.
The Labour bill won't only cover voter ID. It can be expected to cover things like effective voter registration with provisions for automatic registration or a new residency system that makes it impossible not to register (see Germany for example), the ability to cast provisional votes and register to vote at the polling station subject to later verification (as in many US states), the extension of the franchise to 16 year olds with automatic registration of 15 year olds via school records, a reversal of the extension of voting rights to non-taxpaying ex pats of 15 years absence, and so on. If voter ID were to stay there would have to be a scheme where two non-photographic forms of ID were acceptable in the absence of photographic ID (eg. Arizona) one of which could be the polling card, or a new push for a national identity card pending which the scheme might be scrapped altogether. I think it's quite likely that all of the above could feature.
My own favourite would be a measure to ensure that politicians act in the interests of every citizen of the country, not just those of voting age. Surely that's consistent with democracy? So give parents the right to cast extra votes for each of their under age children if they live with their children. If there's a mother and a father the mother can vote for the girls and the father for the boys, otherwise a single parent votes for all of them.
I can get on board with making voter registration easier.
Big fat “no” in my book to anything approaching provisional votes (and personally I strongly disagree with votes at 16).
Provisional votes are only cast by people who are qualified to vote. It works elsewhere. So long that the UK continues to have an endemic problem with voter non-registration, it is needed here too.
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
The US electoral system is not one that I would have thought people would have advocated emulating. It takes them weeks to have an official winner. They can get away with that logistically because they have elections in November for terms of office that start in January.
In my naive days I would have thought not. But then the UK Conservatives started to emulate the way that US Republicans practise voter suppression. What you see in the likes of Nevada is simply the push back.
There you go again, assuming what you're trying to prove - despite there being no evidence at all that bringing GB in line with Northern Ireland will help the Tories (as the header shows).
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
You're going full MAGA now. There's a job waiting for you in the Texas Republican Party.
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
Nah, full MAGA is saying that the results didn't match the votes cast, which is absurd nonsense.
2 million is a ridiculous exaggeration. But then so is calling the three-minute form "very high hoops".
Why don't you care about the security of the ballot?
"Absurd nonsense" published by the House of Commons Library is here.
"The Electoral Commission’s Public Opinion Tracker 2022, carried out in February 2022, found that 4% of people in Britain (equivalent to around 1.9m voters) did not have any of the pre-existing forms of photo ID required to vote. The Public Opinion Tracker is a national survey of around 5,000 people."
At the last count, about 1.5% of the estimated number needing to had applied for the necessary documentation. I'll judge the height of the hoops by how many eventually make it through.
I should incidentally have referred to "very high invisible hoops" because too many won't realise they are even there until it's too late.
Depending upon HMG's competence & diligence in assisting local authorities in implementing new voter ID requirements . . . {am waiting for laughter to die down} . . . possible that the howls of outrage from frustrated but otherwise qualified voters at the upcoming local elections, will give some warning to the remainder of the electorate?
Sorta like taking a canary . . . and shoving it head-first into a strip-mine drain pit.
Good old Macron finally doing his pensions reforms I see. 6 years of work but fair to say not universally adored.
And all that effort to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. A lot of the French are seething but at least it looks like they have some chance of reaching retirement before dying or going gaga.
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
When the pension age for men was set at 65 in 1925, average male life expectancy was 57. Life expectancy for men didn't exceed pension age until 1948.
I really can’t get worked up about the voter ID requirements. Plenty of other countries manage it. I don’t really have a problem with someone demonstrating they are who they say they are when they go to vote. It really seems wholly sensible in a lot of ways.
I would say that I’m not sure it’s curing any problem we had, in that I don’t think rampant impersonation was a huge issue in our elections. As others have said, the postal voting system is more open to abuse.
How do we know personation was a problem, if we were taking no steps t identify or prevent it?
If turnout reduces significantly under the new rules requiring voter ID, clearly personation was a problem. If it barely changes, clearly introducing it doesn't create hardship. Win-win.
Your last paragraph, with all due respect, is nonsense. If turnout goes down it will be because large numbers of valid voters who lack the necessary photo ID are turned away. They will absolutely dwarf any personation that is deterred. I find it genuinely chilling that people can be so blasé about disenfranchising voters. People died so we could have the right to vote FFS.
1) Prove it.
2) If you don't have a valid photo ID, you aren't a "valid voter". Therefore, no "valid voters" will be prevented from voting as a result of the new rules. QED
3) Splitting hairs a bit, but did people really die for our right to vote, per se? If all parties in (say) WWII were democracies, would we not have still defended ourselves from outside invasion? Or is the (implicit) argument that a democratic Germany wouldn't have tried?
1) There are millions of people who lack the valid ID. There are not millions of people turning up and voting in place of other people. On the basis of past evidence there are not even thousands.
2) so if the government decided women couldn't vote it would be fine because only men would be valid voters and they could still vote?
3) Ever heard of the Peterloo Massacre?
1) Prove it. You cannot prove a lack of personation on the basis that a system that isn't designed to catch it, isn't catching it.
2) Er... what? I mean, it wouldn't be fine, obviously (unless women voluntarily gave up suffrage en masse, for some reason?) But no, the problem wouldn't be "valid voters" not being allowed to vote. The two aren't remotely comparable.
3) Only in passing. But OK, I stand corrected. Fifteen people died for my right to vote.
1) Surely the people who want to make a very controversial change to how people vote should be able to produce some evidence that personation is a problem. They've been in power long enough. The fact that they haven't even attempted to shows that they themselves know that it is bullshit, and they are a bunch of liars.
"very controversial" only because you say so. I say it's not remotely controversial, because this is standard practice elsewhere in democratic countries, equalises GB with NI and anyway official Labour policy for ages was compulsory ID cards so what are they even complaining about.
However, this is not the point. The point is that it is currently impossible to demonstrate personation, because the system simply doesn't check for it. So how could anyone produce evidence for (or against) it?
Surely if personation at polling stations were an issue we would have loads of stories of people turning up to vote to be told "sorry, according to our records you've already voted"? That doesn't happen, as far as I'm aware.
Nah, if you turn up lateish you can see which addresses aren't crossed out and just tell the officials you live at the ones that are still left, and hope. Or you find out which of your neighbours never vote and it's even more straightforward. Lots of other ways. Also, currently if it does happen, the officials just assume they made a mistake in the crossing out - do we keep track of how often this happens?
If personation were happening on any kind of scale it would be with the connivance of one of the political parties, at least at the local level. But it just doesn't make sense. The risks of getting caught are too great, because unlike postal voting fraud it has to be done in plain sight and it involves a lot of people. Just on a risk/reward basis it isn't worth it - the number of votes you could shift are marginal and the cost if you got caught is huge. And with the effort involved you could probably find more legitimate voters to vote for you.
Plus, if it were happening at any scale there would be complainants. You wouldn’t turn up at your polling station, get told “sorry you’ve already voted” and leave it there. And if you’ve register then you’re going to have some intent to vote, so there would be cases of that.
You can buy lists of who voted, someone hasn't voted last couple of elections, probably not going to vote in this one so fairly safe. I went on voter strike in 2010...for all I know I have voted in every election since
But if you don’t care enough to check, or to come off the register, then does it matter? There won’t be many in your position.
So it doesn't matter if someone gets a second vote is that what you are saying? Yes there is a lot in my position as well....about 30% don't vote in a general election. Most will still be registered
yes but see my other post. You can't keep walking into a polling station and voting under a different name. You will get spotted very easily.
a team of activists with a list each going once into a polling centre, then moving onto the next?
Pagan you clearly don't know about polling day operations. Every activist is knocking up, delivering get out the vote leaflets, running a committee room, telling, delivering people to the polling booth, etc, etc. There isn't enough people to do that so you move people into target wards. There is no point in doing it in a non target ward. This is far more productive than using your entire team to get a few fraudulent votes. Most wards only have one or two polling stations anyway. Telling itself is a huge operation.
Really you don't have a team of people to do this that aren't all doing something far more productive.
Also you will have to convince a lot of people to commit a crime for which when they are caught for getting one extra vote they will end up in prison. Not likely is it.
Don't get me wrong not claiming its happening. I am merely pointing out that it could be done relatively easily by acquiring the non voter list from previous elections. Get 10 people together visit every polling station in the constituency. Circa 50 polling stations then that is 5000 votes
500, isn't it?
And in 2019, there were 12 seats where that heist would have been enough to swing the result. (Yes in Coventry South, no in Moray, fact fans.)
And in 2024, there will be a similar number of hypermarginals, except they will be different seats, depending on the national picture. And if you know which ones they will be in advance, I think we'd all appreciate a header here.
If you want to fiddle the results of an election, there are routes with a much better risk:reward ratio. Trying to persuade the Boundary Commission of the merits of your plans for one.
Sorry yes 500, however you can just recruit more people and it stacks up. Also for those saying who would risk prison....well offer an illegal 100 quid for a nights work they would bite your hand off likely and you aren't one of the ones going into vote so as long as they dont know your name. You are paying 1000 quid per 500 votes.
Cash in advance? Or later when you believe them when they say they definitely did what you asked?
At work today, I've been talking a lot about Pornhub.
To colleagues, verbally, via email, and messaging systems. I've even commissioned a report on Pornhub.
The bits in bold broke me.
MindGeek, one of the world’s largest and most controversial porn companies and the parent company of Pornhub, has been acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, a newly set-up Canadian private equity firm.
The move comes as MindGeek is being sued over sexually-explicit videos of minors found on its so-called tube sites, which much like YouTube rely on users to upload content.
Luxembourg-registered MindGeek has towered over the adult industry since the advent of video streaming. Its most recently published figures show revenues in 2018 reached $460mn while profit margins have at times neared 50 per cent, according to people familiar with the matter.
The identity of MindGeek’s former majority owner Bernd Bergmair — an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who also uses the name Bernard Bergemar — was first revealed by an FT investigation.
MindGeek has since suffered a string of criticism over its business model, causing the departure of its top management team and partial loss of access to the Visa and Mastercard payment networks.
"We seek out investment opportunities in industries that require principled ethical leadership. We do not shy away from legal and regulatory complexity. We deliver value for investors by prioritizing trust, safety and compliance."
The Metropolitan police service is riddled with deep-seated racism, sexism and homophobia and has failed to change despite numerous official reviews urging it to do so, an official report will say.
The report from Louise Casey, which is due to be published on Tuesday, will excoriate Britain’s biggest police force, the Guardian has been told. Senior government and policing figures are aware of its contents, with one describing it as “horrible” and another as “atrocious”. One source with knowledge of the findings said the report would make clear that the Met was in the “last-chance saloon”.
At work today, I've been talking a lot about Pornhub.
To colleagues, verbally, via email, and messaging systems. I've even commissioned a report on Pornhub.
The bits in bold broke me.
MindGeek, one of the world’s largest and most controversial porn companies and the parent company of Pornhub, has been acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, a newly set-up Canadian private equity firm.
The move comes as MindGeek is being sued over sexually-explicit videos of minors found on its so-called tube sites, which much like YouTube rely on users to upload content.
Luxembourg-registered MindGeek has towered over the adult industry since the advent of video streaming. Its most recently published figures show revenues in 2018 reached $460mn while profit margins have at times neared 50 per cent, according to people familiar with the matter.
The identity of MindGeek’s former majority owner Bernd Bergmair — an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who also uses the name Bernard Bergemar — was first revealed by an FT investigation.
MindGeek has since suffered a string of criticism over its business model, causing the departure of its top management team and partial loss of access to the Visa and Mastercard payment networks.
"We seek out investment opportunities in industries that require principled ethical leadership. We do not shy away from legal and regulatory complexity. We deliver value for investors by prioritizing trust, safety and compliance."
I didn’t know there was any such thing as a Dominion of New Zealand. I knew Canada was, Dominion Day and all that, but not NZ. The only real dominion is the Old Dominion of course.
Comments
Hard work this. I’m so bloody drunk.
And in 2019, there were 12 seats where that heist would have been enough to swing the result. (Yes in Coventry South, no in Moray, fact fans.)
And in 2024, there will be a similar number of hypermarginals, except they will be different seats, depending on the national picture. And if you know which ones they will be in advance, I think we'd all appreciate a header here.
If you want to fiddle the results of an election, there are routes with a much better risk:reward ratio. Trying to persuade the Boundary Commission of the merits of your plans for one.
Dominic Raab MP repeatedly reduced staff to tears and "ruined people's lives" through "coercive behaviour", according to officials who worked with him.
Sky's @BethRigby spoke to former colleagues of Dominic Raab MP ⏬
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1636420970649989120?s=46&t=jkvRY6JsvE1I-2t12-QBqQ
A couple of parents overheard, and the reaction from the adults was “that’s wrong”
At the moment I don't qualify for the UK state handout until 67 but I'd be surprised if the date doesn't keep being "reformed" further into the future, and I end up not getting it until I'm at least 70. Today's youth might as well whistle for it.
You have to be exceedingly stupid to do this and the impact you are likely to have can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
Postal vote fraud on the other hand......
https://www.nvsos.gov/sos/elections/voters/provisional-voting
https://sos.oregon.gov/elections/Documents/SEL113.pdf
In practice, the checking of provisional votes need not delay the outcome of elections except where results are close. i.e. where the number of provisional votes exceeds the winning margin. But where the result is close, it is important to take a bit of time to get it right.
I have actually been a witness in an election fraud case, but that was to do with expenses.
FWIW I think the members should pay attention to what available information there is about the mood of the wider electorate, and to the strategies advocated by the candidates, and go for Forbes. She appeals more to non-SNP voters than Yousaf, and it's the non-SNP voters that need to be reached out to if they're ever to achieve their primary political objective. She's also identified that a stronger economy, more than a progressive social agenda, is needed to win over more converts to independence - though of course there'll be arguments over whether or not changes which tack significantly rightwards are the best way to achieve this.
At worst they move onto a different polling station and repeat.....absolutely no one will be caught and prosecuted.
(Besides, what we really want an electoral system to do is accurately reflect the views of the electorate, isn't it? My concern about the ID thing is that it will make the results less reflective, in order to counter a fraud that doesn't actually seem to happen.)
Or is it open season on the streets for loud shirts in built up areas on Election Day?
I wonder whether this is just a rule in France or whether it goes further? Quite tricky if true.
Third, don’t obfuscate when it comes to the nation’s finances: tell it as it is. Which right now will mean blaming everything on Westminster, time after time after time. Nothing less than this will do.
https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23391255.scotlands-next-first-minister-must-take-budget/
(Don’t they do this anyway? -ed.)
https://urbanaccessregulations.eu/countries-mainmenu-147/france/nice
Nice ULEZ getting tighter though.
Although "the push back" is a nice euphemism for tech billionaires buying an election, I must say.
The company announced today (8 September) [2017] that its drivers would be banned from using vehicles in London that aren’t fully electric or hybrid from the end of 2019, as part of a 100% transition to electric vehicles (EVs) across the UK by the end of 2022.
https://www.edie.net/uber-to-scrap-all-diesel-and-petrol-vehicles-by-2022/?amp=true
It's a 5% pay rise, with a decent one-off bonus.
given something like 80% of french cars run on diesel that would be a brave move
Although I must admit the one time I was aware of it happening the guy did get away and that was with a policeman present.
Pagan, be sensible, would you take the risk and for one vote and you will almost certainly go to prison if caught.
BEVs are starting to come in. And a few drivers say their next car will be a Tesla Model 3, for example.
April 22 - rise 4.75%
April 23 - rise 5%
Plus the one-off payment.
To compare to inflation, you would have to compare:
4.75% to the average inflation rate between April 22 and March 23
5% to the average inflation rate between April 23 and March 24
(Plus allow for the one-off payment)
ie It's pretty complicated - but certainly excluding the one-off payment it's a fairly significant real terms pay-cut over the two years.
With the one-off it's possibly close to inflation but then the one-off isn't in the base going forward.
If you are going to go down this route you might as well also say IDs are useless because they can be forged so you still need something else.
It is all nonsense.
Voter fraud at the polling station can happen but is very rare. Postal voter fraud does happen. Therefore Governments should focus their attention on stopping the latter.
If you want to fix elections, then do it with postal votes. It is a no brainer.
Voter ID should be accompanied by an end to postal and proxy voting. Allow early voting in person at council officers for those planning to be away.
......and he recommended a Lexus hybrid like his!
So that was how I risked imprisonment to vote for the 'longest suicide note in history'. Never again.
In all seriousness a team effort and the best infrastructure leaders I've ever worked with, including some (most) who had fantastic integrity and great personal values.
Learnt an awful lot from them.
The whole thing is an expensive and farcical diversion from government facing up to the reality of its own failing and contradictory policy towards local government for over a decade. I do wonder how their recruitment drive for new Inspectors is going.
https://www.lgcplus.com/finance/slough-months-behind-as-two-commissioners-depart-16-03-2023/
The voter ID requirement in Northern Ireland was brought in following evidence of significant voter personation there.
The voter ID requirement in here is being brought in despite the almost complete absence of evidence of voter personation here. I say "almost" because there was 1 case of voter personation in 2021 in which a police caution was issued to 2 persons.
So basically an estimated 2 million people are going to have to jump through some new very high hoops in 2023 in order to vote, and very few will make the effort to do so, because in 2021 one woman tried to use her mother's polling card to vote on the advice of her father, and both the daughter and father were cautioned.
https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/our-views-and-research/our-research/electoral-fraud-data/2021-electoral-fraud-data
Now scale that up a little for 100K you can get 5000 votes in ten target constituencies. Many are willing to donate far more than 100k to a political party. If someone wanted to they could actually throw a fair few constituencies will little chance of comeback
2 million is a ridiculous exaggeration. But then so is calling the three-minute form "very high hoops".
Why don't you care about the security of the ballot?
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06546/
https://twitter.com/Feorlean/status/1636296157759430658?s=20
Who could he have in mind?
Year end 2019 — 125,691
Year end 2020 — 105,393
Year end 2021 — 103,884
Year end 2022 — 82,598
15 February 2023 — 72,186
https://twitter.com/BBCJamesCook/status/1636411552541847553?s=20
Now that the figure has been released (72,186 SNP members) let's look at the financial crisis that is looming for the SNP even if the police don't take action on the missing £600K.
The SNP are accustomed to spending big in election years & replenishing the coffers in off years.
https://twitter.com/johnstuartwilso/status/1636393917754249221
Before I put the pad down Have we been distracted from flagging up polls? Was crap Delta Work for the Tories posted when I was looking elsewhere? Added to the recent Omnisisis, means majority of pollsters report Tory drop this week compared to their previous.
What does it currently say graphically? when I look at the end of the graph, the Tory line appears to me to resemble someone pissing up a wall, presumably because they don’t like the writing on it - look at it for yourself, so I suggest that clear vertical upward blue streaming line Tories currently getting relief from on the end there is under subject to be failing downward again very soon.
Hope all that helps you.
People are suspicious of government motives because we see the government taking a frankly intrusive approach to tackling a source of potential electoral fraud that, if it happens at all, has no evidence of it happening in result-shifting amounts. Whilst doing nothing about postal votes, where I think we're pretty confident that there's a bigger problem.
It's like protecting your house by putting a rottweiler in the front garden while leaving the back door open and unlocked.
The idea that this is all done without the local party's knowledge is farcical. No agent or candidate is going to risk his freedom.
I’m not so sure this pragmatism will survive this time .
The ever-growing number of pensioners is an enormous burden to the working age taxpayer, and the politicians won't dare to shift any of the burden onto existing oldies (by taxing their asset wealth and/or replacing the triple lock with something less generous.) Thus, the only realistic means left to ameliorate the situation is not only to tell younger workers to keep shelling out more and more in tax to keep the old in the manner to which they have become accustomed, but also to kick their own retirements into an ever-more-distant future.
We also see the "sharing" of senior posts at local authorities as an attempt to save money but for a single individual to be CEO at two Councils isn't practical yet it happens.
Lash and horses. And then more lash.
My day has been the full arbeit.
"The Electoral Commission’s Public Opinion Tracker 2022, carried out in
February 2022, found that 4% of people in Britain (equivalent to around 1.9m
voters) did not have any of the pre-existing forms of photo ID required to vote.
The Public Opinion Tracker is a national survey of around 5,000 people."
At the last count, about 1.5% of the estimated number needing to had applied for the necessary documentation. I'll judge the height of the hoops by how many eventually make it through.
I should incidentally have referred to "very high invisible hoops" because too many won't realise they are even there until it's too late.
I expect it will be published after the May elections !
Russian Wagner Group puts €15m bounty on Italian minister’s head
Guido Crosetto has been critical of the Kremlin, making him a possible assassination target for the mercenary group
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/03/16/russian-wagner-group-places-15m-bounty-italian-minister-guido/
I hope they quadruple the protection detail on Ben Wallace.
"Westminster Voting Intention:
LAB: 46% (-4)
CON: 25% (-1)
RFM: 9% (+3)
GRN: 7% (+2)
LDM: 6% (-1)
SNP: 3% (-1)
Via
@Omnisis
, 15 Mar.
Changes w/ 8-9 Mar."
To colleagues, verbally, via email, and messaging systems. I've even commissioned a report on Pornhub.
The bits in bold broke me.
MindGeek, one of the world’s largest and most controversial porn companies and the parent company of Pornhub, has been acquired by Ethical Capital Partners, a newly set-up Canadian private equity firm.
The move comes as MindGeek is being sued over sexually-explicit videos of minors found on its so-called tube sites, which much like YouTube rely on users to upload content.
Luxembourg-registered MindGeek has towered over the adult industry since the advent of video streaming. Its most recently published figures show revenues in 2018 reached $460mn while profit margins have at times neared 50 per cent, according to people familiar with the matter.
The identity of MindGeek’s former majority owner Bernd Bergmair — an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who also uses the name Bernard Bergemar — was first revealed by an FT investigation.
MindGeek has since suffered a string of criticism over its business model, causing the departure of its top management team and partial loss of access to the Visa and Mastercard payment networks.
https://www.ft.com/content/69c3295e-6f45-4b5f-8e7b-3b8d56ca46c8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_Zealand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realm_of_New_Zealand
Sorta like taking a canary . . . and shoving it head-first into a strip-mine drain pit.
"We seek out investment opportunities in industries that require principled ethical leadership. We do not shy away from legal and regulatory complexity. We deliver value for investors by prioritizing trust, safety and compliance."
https://www.ethicalcapitalpartners.com/about
The report from Louise Casey, which is due to be published on Tuesday, will excoriate Britain’s biggest police force, the Guardian has been told. Senior government and policing figures are aware of its contents, with one describing it as “horrible” and another as “atrocious”. One source with knowledge of the findings said the report would make clear that the Met was in the “last-chance saloon”.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/16/met-police-on-last-chance-as-casey-report-to-condemn-failure-to-change