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.
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”.
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.
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”.
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”.
I hope they quadruple the protection detail on Ben Wallace.
Isn't the Wagner Group about done, morphing from an allegedly crack (also wack) elite military strike force, into a badly-led, worse-supported, below-average penal brigade?
Even by Mad Vlad's pathetic standards! Which is why he's reportedly cut Satan's F-Troop off from recruiting more drone-fodder from Russia's most elite prisons and borshtals (sp).
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
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.
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.
Most polls this week have Tory share going backwards since firms previous survey. Worst delta for some time.
As Mike flagged up in at least one header, gap opening up between established and newb pollsters; the long-standing and experienced firms, yougov, Ipsos Mori, consistently find Tory’s under 25%.
And what Andy is astutely flagging up to us, would you have predicted 9% reform ratings a year ago?
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”.
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.
Five times the budget, I think?
It does seem strange how infrastructure costs so much to build in the UK. Do we 1) build with unnecessary quality (100 year events being over specified) or 2) set original cost estimates too low on purpose (because otherwise nothing would get approval). Edinburgh trams for example - a neighbour who worked on the scheme told me that the cost per mile is 5 times that for trams in German cities where there are significant numbers of WW2 UXBs.
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
Nah. More likely they take the cash and don't go anywhere near any polling stations.
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”.
That's just going to trigger another round of excruciating Wokery and frenetic virtue-signalling turned up to 11.
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
A bit of Wokery clearly wouldn't go amiss in the Met.
Wokery is Wokery. It solves nothing and just annoys the fuck out of people - because it's all about lazy grouping of people by their identity group, censoring people for not using the latest trendy language and very noisy, self-indulgence and narcissistic virtue-signalling.
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
I know your role on the site but don't be fooled. Compared to two weeks ago the Cons are down 1, Lab up 1, Ref up 3. The last poll had seen a dubious Lab surge of 5 points that has now corrected itself. You don't win many elections with 25%. Omnisis is a skittish poll so I'd always want to see other pollsters match a trend. Delta, RW, Savanta and Techne all showed Reform level or down on their previous poll. It is possible Reform will lose that gain in the next Omnisis poll just as Lab did this time and the LDs did last time.
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
Nah. More likely they take the cash and don't go anywhere near any polling stations.
Or get back in the minicab as SeanT has just made a booking
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
Wow the Tory imagination machine is on overdrive tonight. Illegal immigrants stealing our elections... Must be a trans angle we can work in there somewhere! "Woke trans migrants stealing YOUR vote - while lefty lawyers LAUGH IN YOUR FACE"
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
Wow the Tory imagination machine is on overdrive tonight. Illegal immigrants stealing our elections... Must be a trans angle we can work in there somewhere! "Woke trans migrants stealing YOUR vote - while lefty lawyers LAUGH IN YOUR FACE"
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.
At what point did I say it was done without someone in the party knowing about it? What I have suggested is no more complex than most drug gangs where the leads rarely lead to the top.....oh yes they have been running for years so yes its feasible
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”.
That's just going to trigger another round of excruciating Wokery and frenetic virtue-signalling turned up to 11.
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
A bit of Wokery clearly wouldn't go amiss in the Met.
Wokery is Wokery. It solves nothing and just annoys the fuck out of people - because it's all about lazy grouping of people by their identity group, censoring people for not using the latest trendy language and very noisy, self-indulgence and narcissistic virtue-signalling.
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
That's what they need to fix.
I think I'd need to see your definition of 'wokery', and 'woke' for that matter.
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.
Anywhere with a “House” in London had a special status in the British Empire.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were Dominions. India was an Empire. Everywhere else were colonies.
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.
Anywhere with a “House” in London had a special status in the British Empire.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were Dominions. India was an Empire. Everywhere else were colonies.
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
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.
Ramsons is abundant and very resilient.
I prefer foraging for mushrooms as the stakes are higher, if you make a mistake
A friend of mine had a near-death experience with a deadly webcap. A kidney transplant later...
A good poisoner should always know what is lethal and close to hand in the wild.
Like Atropa belladonna, my photo and all-time favourite.
We had Hemlock water-dropwort in the garden for a while. I thought that was a plant too far to be honest, although at least it wasn't in a parsnip bed.
I had henbane in the garden of my previous house. Magnificent.
I have a patch of bittersweet - Solanum dulcamara. Close relative of the belladonna - poisonous too. I keep it as the foodplant for a micromoth, Acrolpeia autumnitella
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.
Anywhere with a “House” in London had a special status in the British Empire.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were Dominions. India was an Empire. Everywhere else were colonies.
I hope they quadruple the protection detail on Ben Wallace.
Isn't the Wagner Group about done, morphing from an allegedly crack (also wack) elite military strike force, into a badly-led, worse-supported, below-average penal brigade?
Even by Mad Vlad's pathetic standards! Which is why he's reportedly cut Satan's F-Troop off from recruiting more drone-fodder from Russia's most elite prisons and borshtals (sp).
There was a short piece on R4's PM programme tonight with some Ukrainian soldiers talking about fighting the Wagner troops. Seems they are using the criminal/junky/whatever 'troops' as cannon fodder to flush out where the Ukrainian positions are - then sending the better troops in to engage in proper combat.
I’d expect most of the reform to move back towards the Tories at the GE and the same for the Greens towards Labour so the voter pool would be 53% Labour and 34% for the Tories .
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.
At what point did I say it was done without someone in the party knowing about it? What I have suggested is no more complex than most drug gangs where the leads rarely lead to the top.....oh yes they have been running for years so yes its feasible
You specifically said you were anonymous. This is bonkers beyond belief. So far we have dozens of people involved to make it happen including the local party. Lots of people are going to go to prison. I have been an agent and I can assure you, I was paranoid just about just getting the imprint right on the literature so I was sure I wasn't breaking the law. The idea I would have allowed or not known what you are talking about happening and then not done something about it is bizarre.
PS As far as I am aware election law doesn't apply to drug gangs. Don't think for instance they have to file expenses or put an imprint on their literature.
I hope they quadruple the protection detail on Ben Wallace.
Isn't the Wagner Group about done, morphing from an allegedly crack (also wack) elite military strike force, into a badly-led, worse-supported, below-average penal brigade?
Even by Mad Vlad's pathetic standards! Which is why he's reportedly cut Satan's F-Troop off from recruiting more drone-fodder from Russia's most elite prisons and borshtals (sp).
There was a short piece on R4's PM programme tonight with some Ukrainian soldiers talking about fighting the Wagner troops. Seems they are using the criminal/junky/whatever 'troops' as cannon fodder to flush out where the Ukrainian positions are - then sending the better troops in to engage in proper combat.
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.
Anywhere with a “House” in London had a special status in the British Empire.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were Dominions. India was an Empire. Everywhere else were colonies.
Several of the A4 locos were named after these Commonwealth countries. By BR numbers, they were 60009 Union of South Africa, 60011 Empire of India, 60012 Commonwealth of Australia and 60013 Dominion of New Zealand.
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”.
That's just going to trigger another round of excruciating Wokery and frenetic virtue-signalling turned up to 11.
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
A bit of Wokery clearly wouldn't go amiss in the Met.
Wokery is Wokery. It solves nothing and just annoys the fuck out of people - because it's all about lazy grouping of people by their identity group, censoring people for not using the latest trendy language and very noisy, self-indulgence and narcissistic virtue-signalling.
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
That's what they need to fix.
I think I'd need to see your definition of 'wokery', and 'woke' for that matter.
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.
At what point did I say it was done without someone in the party knowing about it? What I have suggested is no more complex than most drug gangs where the leads rarely lead to the top.....oh yes they have been running for years so yes its feasible
You specifically said you were anonymous. This is bonkers beyond belief. So far we have dozens of people involved to make it happen including the local party. Lots of people are going to go to prison. I have been an agent and I can assure you, I was paranoid just about just getting the imprint right on the literature so I was sure I wasn't breaking the law. The idea I would have allowed or not known what you are talking about happening and then not done something about it is bizarre.
No you dont have dozens involved that is your mistake because you look at it as someone is a law abiding person, someone say to a party official if someone was to make a donation of £x,000,000 to a charity (which are easy enough to set up) then people may favour the party.
Charity receives the donation pays a contractor for work done....receipt given for say pr activities all above board.
person behind charity then purchases debt from criminal gangs for the gang bosses... no name needed nor face seen. Tells them debt is wiped out if they cooperate....if they get traced back to take the rap family gets looked after, else if they squeal family gets taken care of.
Points bosses at people to contact for illegals
It would take a lot to trace it back to the person behind the charity let alone the party.
Its merely sensible organisation and happens every day
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.
Anywhere with a “House” in London had a special status in the British Empire.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were Dominions. India was an Empire. Everywhere else were colonies.
Poor Newfoundland.
Meh. They ran out of money
In part due to their above-average rate of enlistments and other contributions to the British war effort 1914-18. The rest due to depression already shaky local economy.
Newfies were loyal to Britain. Pretty much a one-way street. Very Dickensian.
France spends an eye-watering 16% of GDP on pensions, a lowly 6% in the UK. Tories, take note.
If you're arguing the Tories should almost triple the massive amount they already spend on pensions and pensioner benefits I think I might just go and jump off a cliff.
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”.
That's just going to trigger another round of excruciating Wokery and frenetic virtue-signalling turned up to 11.
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
A bit of Wokery clearly wouldn't go amiss in the Met.
Wokery is Wokery. It solves nothing and just annoys the fuck out of people - because it's all about lazy grouping of people by their identity group, censoring people for not using the latest trendy language and very noisy, self-indulgence and narcissistic virtue-signalling.
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
That's what they need to fix.
I think I'd need to see your definition of 'wokery', and 'woke' for that matter.
Literally just told you.
Please don't waste my time.
I didn't waste my time by reading past 'Wokery is wokery'.
France spends an eye-watering 16% of GDP on pensions, a lowly 6% in the UK. Tories, take note.
If you're arguing the Tories should almost triple the massive amount they already spend on pensions and pensioner benefits I think I might just go and jump off a cliff.
That may have been a sarcastic comment at the end.
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”.
That's just going to trigger another round of excruciating Wokery and frenetic virtue-signalling turned up to 11.
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
A bit of Wokery clearly wouldn't go amiss in the Met.
Wokery is Wokery. It solves nothing and just annoys the fuck out of people - because it's all about lazy grouping of people by their identity group, censoring people for not using the latest trendy language and very noisy, self-indulgence and narcissistic virtue-signalling.
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
That's what they need to fix.
I think I'd need to see your definition of 'wokery', and 'woke' for that matter.
Literally just told you.
Please don't waste my time.
The other view is that wokery woke up enough folk to call it out.
No doubt you'll dismiss that, but yours is a circular definition - it's the annoying shit that annoys you - so you're hardly the unbiased arbiter anyway.
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this 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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this stuff.
I am sure you will learn, perhaps I should offer a course
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.
Anywhere with a “House” in London had a special status in the British Empire.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were Dominions. India was an Empire. Everywhere else were colonies.
Several of the A4 locos were named after these Commonwealth countries. By BR numbers, they were 60009 Union of South Africa, 60011 Empire of India, 60012 Commonwealth of Australia and 60013 Dominion of New Zealand.
I saw each and everyone of those in full steam from my school in Berwick in the 1950s
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
I went to the Maple Leaf in Covent Garden on Canada Day and earnestly asked some drunken patrons whether “Oh Canada” was sung to the same tune as “Sweet Caroline”. They thought it a good idea.
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this stuff.
I am sure you will learn, perhaps I should offer a course
No I'll give it a miss. I find leaflet deliveries exciting enough
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this stuff.
I am sure you will learn, perhaps I should offer a course
You really are PB’s answer to Jay out of The Inbetweeners.
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this stuff.
I am sure you will learn, perhaps I should offer a course
No I'll give it a miss. I find leaflet deliveries exciting enough
British voting is less corrupt that a lot of places, mine were hypotheticals about how I would organise it I wasn't saying it is happening. Just saying it could be done easily with no comeback to the organisers
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”.
That's just going to trigger another round of excruciating Wokery and frenetic virtue-signalling turned up to 11.
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
A bit of Wokery clearly wouldn't go amiss in the Met.
Wokery is Wokery. It solves nothing and just annoys the fuck out of people - because it's all about lazy grouping of people by their identity group, censoring people for not using the latest trendy language and very noisy, self-indulgence and narcissistic virtue-signalling.
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
That's what they need to fix.
I think I'd need to see your definition of 'wokery', and 'woke' for that matter.
Literally just told you.
Please don't waste my time.
The other view is that wokery woke up enough folk to call it out.
No doubt you'll dismiss that, but yours is a circular definition - it's the annoying shit that annoys you - so you're hardly the unbiased arbiter anyway.
You could always read my post and enlighten yourself.
Does anyone believe for a moment that Reform UK are going to get more votes than the Lib Dems? I mean, Ed is a bit of a disaster but seriously? It is just nonsense.
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this stuff.
I am sure you will learn, perhaps I should offer a course
You really are PB’s answer to Jay out of The Inbetweeners.
Well no idea who either Jay is or the inbetweeners so no idea what the thrust of your undoubted barb was
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”.
That's just going to trigger another round of excruciating Wokery and frenetic virtue-signalling turned up to 11.
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
A bit of Wokery clearly wouldn't go amiss in the Met.
Wokery is Wokery. It solves nothing and just annoys the fuck out of people - because it's all about lazy grouping of people by their identity group, censoring people for not using the latest trendy language and very noisy, self-indulgence and narcissistic virtue-signalling.
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
That's what they need to fix.
Interesting. Do you blame bird flu and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation on Wokery as well?
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this stuff.
I am sure you will learn, perhaps I should offer a course
You really are PB’s answer to Jay out of The Inbetweeners.
Well no idea who either Jay is or the inbetweeners so no idea what the thrust of your undoubted barb was
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
(1) Wouldn't a 22 year old chap with an Albanian accent who turned up and said his name was Reginald Smythe not be a tad suspicous?
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
One.....illegal immigrants are actually easy to get hold off two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out. Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
I know politicians have a bad reputation but really they are not that bad. You seem to have an unhealthy knowledge of exploitation of illegals and drug gangs. I'm afraid us activists are novices at this stuff.
I am sure you will learn, perhaps I should offer a course
You really are PB’s answer to Jay out of The Inbetweeners.
Well no idea who either Jay is or the inbetweeners so no idea what the thrust of your undoubted barb was
Does anyone believe for a moment that Reform UK are going to get more votes than the Lib Dems? I mean, Ed is a bit of a disaster but seriously? It is just nonsense.
UKIP got 3.9m votes in 2015, vs 2.4m for the Lib Dems, and that was when the Conservatives were much more popular. So it's possible, if not particularly likely.
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”.
Does anyone believe for a moment that Reform UK are going to get more votes than the Lib Dems? I mean, Ed is a bit of a disaster but seriously? It is just nonsense.
Opinion polls are of limited value in any case, but these kinds of numbers for the moribund and deeply obscure RefUK are utterly laughable. They'll be doing well come the next GE to match the Brexit Party's 2% national share from last time.
I'm assuming that these pollsters must be prompting for them, and that most of their supposed vote would vanish into thin air if this were not the case; besides which, are they going to have either the money or the support to stand candidates in that many seats in any event?
Does anyone believe for a moment that Reform UK are going to get more votes than the Lib Dems? I mean, Ed is a bit of a disaster but seriously? It is just nonsense.
Opinion polls are of limited value in any case, but these kinds of numbers for the moribund and deeply obscure RefUK are utterly laughable. They'll be doing well come the next GE to match the Brexit Party's 2% national share from last time.
I'm assuming that these pollsters must be prompting for them, and that most of their supposed vote would vanish into thin air if this were not the case; besides which, are they going to have either the money or the support to stand candidates in that many seats in any event?
I wondered how many of their alleged supporters thought that they were actually indicating their support for a Referendum party. It frankly makes no sense but if the abbreviation Ref UK was used that is possible. After all has even 1 person in 100 heard of Tice, let alone be willing to vote for his party.
Electoral calculus makes it 479-94 with no tactical effects.
And OK, that's not going to happen (is it?).
But the nearest comparable polls in '92-'97 were the ICM/Guardian series. Gold standard, Spiral of Silence, all that jazz.
Their polls in 1995 were all in the range Conservative 29 +/- 3 Labour 50 +/- 3 Lib Dem 20 +/- 3
We all know history doesn't repeat and Starmer isn't Blair. And there's still only a bit less than 2 years to go.
But Conservatives need something to change the narrative. What?
The "third party" fragmented vote is proving difficult to pin down. The LDs are at 6% with Omnisis but 11% with Redfield & Wilton. Greens are at 10% with People Polling and 4% with Deltapoll, Reform are 9% with Omnisis and 4% with Deltapoll so make of that what you will.
What we can say is Labour are polling mid to high 40s, Conservatives mid to high 20s and the fragmented third party vote between LDs, Greens and Reform around 20%.
The swing from Conservative to Labour is from 15-18% depending on which poll you look at and as @Foxy suggests, that's landslide territory. However, and it's worth stressing, we are still a long way from an election and you only have to look at history to see how large opposition leads can prove to be chimera on polling day ad in a time of enhanced voter volatility I bet Starmer and Labour are taking nothing for granted.
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
Why are you so driven by getting a rise out of people?
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
I’ve never called any Canadians Americans.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
Yep, one fifth of the landing troops, give or take.
Why is their contribution supposed to have been airbrushed? Just wondering. (I really like Goerge Blackburn's books on being a Canadian artilleryman in the Normandy campaign and NWE. But I don't think he was on D-Day, not that it matters given the contribution they clearly made to the war.)
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
Why are you so driven by getting a rise out of people?
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
I’ve never called any Canadians Americans.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
Yep, one fifth of the landing troops, give or take.
Why is their contribution supposed to have been airbrushed? Just wondering. (I really like Goerge Blackburn's books on being a Canadian artilleryman in the Normandy campaign and NWE. But I don't think he was on D-Day, not that it matters given the contribution they clearly made to the war.)
Broadly D-Day is seen as a US and British affair. For sure the USA had two beaches, and dropped two airborne divisions, the Brits had two beaches and dropped one airborne division. But the Canadians had a beach to themselves, and their navy was present too off shore.
Does anyone believe for a moment that Reform UK are going to get more votes than the Lib Dems? I mean, Ed is a bit of a disaster but seriously? It is just nonsense.
Opinion polls are of limited value in any case, but these kinds of numbers for the moribund and deeply obscure RefUK are utterly laughable. They'll be doing well come the next GE to match the Brexit Party's 2% national share from last time.
I'm assuming that these pollsters must be prompting for them, and that most of their supposed vote would vanish into thin air if this were not the case; besides which, are they going to have either the money or the support to stand candidates in that many seats in any event?
I wondered how many of their alleged supporters thought that they were actually indicating their support for a Referendum party. It frankly makes no sense but if the abbreviation Ref UK was used that is possible. After all has even 1 person in 100 heard of Tice, let alone be willing to vote for his party.
I don't know if this has been done, but it would be interesting to see how much support could be mustered in a poll for an entirely fictitious political party if it were inserted as one of the available prompted choices - especially if it were given an appealingly button-pushing name? The NHS Action Party or the Pensioners' Party could probably drum up 5% without too much difficulty.
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
Why are you so driven by getting a rise out of people?
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
I’ve never called any Canadians Americans.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
Yep, one fifth of the landing troops, give or take.
Why is their contribution supposed to have been airbrushed? Just wondering. (I really like Goerge Blackburn's books on being a Canadian artilleryman in the Normandy campaign and NWE. But I don't think he was on D-Day, not that it matters given the contribution they clearly made to the war.)
Things in films/media.
Watch The Longest Day as an example, you'd be hard pressed to see a mention of the Canadians.
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
Why are you so driven by getting a rise out of people?
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
I’ve never called any Canadians Americans.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
Yep, one fifth of the landing troops, give or take.
Why is their contribution supposed to have been airbrushed? Just wondering. (I really like Goerge Blackburn's books on being a Canadian artilleryman in the Normandy campaign and NWE. But I don't think he was on D-Day, not that it matters given the contribution they clearly made to the war.)
Broadly D-Day is seen as a US and British affair. For sure the USA had two beaches, and dropped two airborne divisions, the Brits had two beaches and dropped one airborne division. But the Canadians had a beach to themselves, and their navy was present too off shore.
Thanks. Juno Beach, sure. Surprising it is downplayed at all.
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
Why are you so driven by getting a rise out of people?
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
I’ve never called any Canadians Americans.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
Yep, one fifth of the landing troops, give or take.
Why is their contribution supposed to have been airbrushed? Just wondering. (I really like Goerge Blackburn's books on being a Canadian artilleryman in the Normandy campaign and NWE. But I don't think he was on D-Day, not that it matters given the contribution they clearly made to the war.)
Broadly D-Day is seen as a US and British affair. For sure the USA had two beaches, and dropped two airborne divisions, the Brits had two beaches and dropped one airborne division. But the Canadians had a beach to themselves, and their navy was present too off shore.
Canadian Navy was pretty substantial by the end of the war. The third biggest in the world.
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
Why are you so driven by getting a rise out of people?
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
I’ve never called any Canadians Americans.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
Yep, one fifth of the landing troops, give or take.
Why is their contribution supposed to have been airbrushed? Just wondering. (I really like Goerge Blackburn's books on being a Canadian artilleryman in the Normandy campaign and NWE. But I don't think he was on D-Day, not that it matters given the contribution they clearly made to the war.)
Broadly D-Day is seen as a US and British affair. For sure the USA had two beaches, and dropped two airborne divisions, the Brits had two beaches and dropped one airborne division. But the Canadians had a beach to themselves, and their navy was present too off shore.
Canadian Navy was pretty substantial by the end of the war. The third biggest in the world.
From almost nothing, too. Dreadful problems in getting up ro speed, unsurprisingly, from such a small beginning.
Made a lot of weapons and equipment too. Bofors guns, aircraft, Ram tanks, Sexton SP guns.
Speaking of "dominions" about the easiest way to get a rise out of a Canuck this century, is to start referring to the "Dominion of Canada''.
Nah, to get a rise out of Canadians just call them Americans.
Why are you so driven by getting a rise out of people?
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
I’ve never called any Canadians Americans.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
Yep, one fifth of the landing troops, give or take.
Why is their contribution supposed to have been airbrushed? Just wondering. (I really like Goerge Blackburn's books on being a Canadian artilleryman in the Normandy campaign and NWE. But I don't think he was on D-Day, not that it matters given the contribution they clearly made to the war.)
Things in films/media.
Watch The Longest Day as an example, you'd be hard pressed to see a mention of the Canadians.
Thanks. Also provided a lot of the garrison of the UK [edit] in the bad early years, and caught it bad at Dieppe.
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_of_New_Zealand#Dominion_in_disuse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Star_Trek)
They're not actually going to do anything about it.
(Hope you enjoy the brevity of this post)
Even by Mad Vlad's pathetic standards! Which is why he's reportedly cut Satan's F-Troop off from recruiting more drone-fodder from Russia's most elite prisons and borshtals (sp).
(2) Given the high risk of getting caught and the likely prison sentence followed by deportation in those circumstances, how much do you think you'd need to pay per vote?
(3) If one person got caught it would rather rumble your plan, surely? And if there were more than a dozen of these Albanians (where are you finding them, by the way?), then it is almost certain that at least one would end up being found out.
(3a) And that Albanian is definitely dobbing you in
https://youtu.be/L6ehkhTn48Q
As Mike flagged up in at least one header, gap opening up between established and newb pollsters; the long-standing and experienced firms, yougov, Ipsos Mori, consistently find Tory’s under 25%.
And what Andy is astutely flagging up to us, would you have predicted 9% reform ratings a year ago?
This is bad leadership and bad behaviour, and an organisation with no integrity. A problem down the ages.
That's what they need to fix.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa were Dominions. India was an Empire. Everywhere else were colonies.
two.. you work through cutouts that never know your name anyway the people who organise the illegals have families that are in debt you buy it out and you make it clear...carry the can if traced back your family is looked after till you come out......don't carry the can well maybe they wont be there when you come out.
Its not really that difficult it is how most drug gangs operate
https://ukmoths.org.uk/species/acrolepia-autumnitella/adult/
https://twitter.com/LibreQg/status/1636434659667001362
I didn't believe him, but he was adamant.
It all sounded utterly horrific.
PS As far as I am aware election law doesn't apply to drug gangs. Don't think for instance they have to file expenses or put an imprint on their literature.
I didn't believe her, but she was in no doubt.
Please don't waste my time.
Charity receives the donation pays a contractor for work done....receipt given for say pr activities all above board.
person behind charity then purchases debt from criminal gangs for the gang bosses... no name needed nor face seen. Tells them debt is wiped out if they cooperate....if they get traced back to take the rap family gets looked after, else if they squeal family gets taken care of.
Points bosses at people to contact for illegals
It would take a lot to trace it back to the person behind the charity let alone the party.
Its merely sensible organisation and happens every day
Newfies were loyal to Britain. Pretty much a one-way street. Very Dickensian.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/16/politics/mar-a-lago-trump-subpoenas/index.html
No doubt you'll dismiss that, but yours is a circular definition - it's the annoying shit that annoys you - so you're hardly the unbiased arbiter anyway.
Broken sleazy political class on the slide?
Lab 369
Con 187
SNP 45
LD 26
Oth 22
Grn 1
https://pollingreport.uk/seats
I can't say trolling people gives me any sense of satisfaction or positive feeling, but you really seem to enjoy it.
He does it all the time and I find the psychology interesting.
I know a lot of Canadians though.
The other thing that boils their piss.
Their contribution on D-Day, constantly airbrushed.
And OK, that's not going to happen (is it?).
But the nearest comparable polls in '92-'97 were the ICM/Guardian series. Gold standard, Spiral of Silence, all that jazz.
Their polls in 1995 were all in the range Conservative 29 +/- 3
Labour 50 +/- 3
Lib Dem 20 +/- 3
We all know history doesn't repeat and Starmer isn't Blair. And there's still only a bit less than 2 years to go.
But Conservatives need something to change the narrative. What?
I'm assuming that these pollsters must be prompting for them, and that most of their supposed vote would vanish into thin air if this were not the case; besides which, are they going to have either the money or the support to stand candidates in that many seats in any event?
This time might be different, but what do you think that different looks like?
What we can say is Labour are polling mid to high 40s, Conservatives mid to high 20s and the fragmented third party vote between LDs, Greens and Reform around 20%.
The swing from Conservative to Labour is from 15-18% depending on which poll you look at and as @Foxy suggests, that's landslide territory. However, and it's worth stressing, we are still a long way from an election and you only have to look at history to see how large opposition leads can prove to be chimera on polling day ad in a time of enhanced voter volatility I bet Starmer and Labour are taking nothing for granted.
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/juno-beach
Watch The Longest Day as an example, you'd be hard pressed to see a mention of the Canadians.
Made a lot of weapons and equipment too. Bofors guns, aircraft, Ram tanks, Sexton SP guns.
·
Mar 15
Do you support or oppose stricter gun laws in the United States?
WOMEN
Support 66%
Oppose 28%
MEN
Support 41%
Oppose 54%
(Quinnipiac U. Poll, 3/9-13/23)