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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Remember Tony Blair’s all postal vote Euro Elections in 200
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Remember Tony Blair’s all postal vote Euro Elections in 2004
In the next couple of weeks postal vote packs for the May 22 Euro Election will be going out to those electors who have registered to cast their votes in this way. The chart shows how significant this form of voting has become.
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If the Euro elections actually mattered I think experiments such as Blair's would really have to be encouraged because describing MEPs as democratically elected at the moment is frankly stretching it a bit. The process is democratic but the mandate is distinctly dodgy. In the year of the Indy referendum they will get even less attention than usual despite the UKIP poster campaign highlighted yesterday.
It also appears that the rest of the EU is coming around to our way of thinking on this. The chart on this page is indicative of the average EU turnout starting out substantially higher but easing towards our turnout election after election: http://www.ukpolitical.info/european-parliament-election-turnout.htm
Turkeys never vote for Christmas but one does have to wonder how bad this has to get before our political masters acknowledge a rethink is required.
I'm not sure that means Boris has a dodgy democratic mandate; It would be nice if more people took part and I'd be all for making it easier where practical, but if most of the population aren't interested, isn't it fair enough to leave the decision to the minority of the voters who are?
There are many problems with low turnout including the fact that it makes politicians focus on the obsessions of those likely to vote. Do you think we would have the current loans system for students if they voted in the same way as pensioners do?
Democracy only really works when the electorate is properly engaged and politicians have to focus on the priorities of the majority. The EU Parliamentary elections are a good example of the problems. Leaving voting to the EU obsessives results in the election of candidates who simply do not reflect the majority view. As the EU Parliament fills up with eccentrics it will become even more of a joke than it is already.
"isn't it fair enough to leave the decision to the minority of the voters who are?"
No.
As people become more disengaged from politics feeling that it offers them nothing, the few who do benefit from having a either a direct line, or indirect one through lobbying become an ever increasing percentage of the vote.
As ever, sort the root cause, or decide that the "universal franchise" was a failure and revert to one of the older systems.
Ease of voting would be of limited use. From conversations over 40+ years, (though of course still anecdotal) disengagement stems from the feeling that it doesn't matter who is in power, the end result remains the same. The people who decide are those who rely on the patronage of a few (be it unions or wealth), and only listen to their concerns and not the normal voter.
It is a hard point to argue against with them, that their view is unsubstantiated.
Interesting discussion last night on TUPE. Those evil eurocrats oppressing us by preserving our employment rights...
Interesting that even though Tony Blair had all postal votes in 4 largely Labour supporting regions in 2004, the Tories still won the election. Given lower turnouts tend to favour the Tories and probably UKIP, just how reliable are the polls likely to be?
Bad news for the Better Together campaign today. Gordon Brown is making a speech in Glasgow tonight warning the Scottish public sector that their pensions are not safe in the hands of an independent Scottish government. This will serve to remind those in the private sector that he plundered private sector pensions which under his watch went from a healthy surplus to deep deficits. My pension fund's value fell by 33% during Brown's 13 years. It has already doubled under George Osborne and is now 33% higher than when John Major left office.
I'm hopeful that the rise of UKIP, Scottish Independence and the increased scrutiny our politicians are under might go some way to bring it all crashing down.
http://newstonoone.blogspot.hu/2014/04/and-where-might-ukips-support-go-to.html
This is much more speculative today and thus much more likely to be utterly wrong.
It all depends on what you mean by electronic voting: people voting from home is very different to going to a polling booth to vote on a specialist computer.
For the latter, an example would be the lottery, where there is a relatively secure system with distributed terminals. But the checks and balances on the lottery (at least from what I've heard) are very large. Banking is far from being an analogue example, either.
Some initial reading:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daw/papers/risks-cacm07.pdf
https://www.eff.org/issues/e-voting
I'm a techie. I'm in favour of new technology. But I also know a dangerous little about the way the Internet and its protocols work, and I don't believe electronic voting is anywhere near ready. BTW, I also don't do Internet banking any more...
http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/business-27108059
Awesome.
Many electronic voting machines are also closed source. One must-have is openness in the source code and hardware. But even then, how can you ensure that the code running on the machine has been produced from the released source code, and has not been modified?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609932/Prospering-ethnic-voters-set-switch-Tories-Black-Asian-middle-class-Cameron-2015-new-report-reveals.html
Annoyingly, the Daily Mail doesn't provide a link, and I can't find it with a quick google.
Won't Bobafett be pleased!
Survation shows a similar demographic skew as TNS:
Net 'no' (excl DK):
AB: +20
C1: +6
C2: +10
DE: +2
http://survation.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Sunday-Post-Dundee-Courier-Tables-1.pdf
Oh, and not even the Scots think Cameron should resign:
In the event of a Yes vote in the referendum and Scotland beginning the negotiating process to become an independent country, should David Cameron resign as Prime Minister of the UK?
Yes: 26
No: 39
Depends on margin: 14
They are, however, more finely balanced on Salmond resigning:
In the event of a No vote in the referendum and Scotland remaining part of the UK, should Alex Salmond resign as First Minister of Scotland?
Yes: 35
No: 40
Depends on margin: 14
Postal voting should be restricted to those with serious medical conditions or whose work means they cannot possibly get to a polling station on the day.
I share concerns raised below about electronic voting. Just because we have high technology doesn't mean we have to try and use it for everything (I still use a pen and paper for some aspects of writing).
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10778081/Middle-class-ethnic-minority-voters-could-help-Tories-win-election.html
"This is an extract from Issue 2 of Demos Quarterly, published on Friday 25 April at quarterly.demos.co.uk "
Hurrah - British companies are finally starting to invest again
http://www.cityam.com/article/1398141173/hurrah-british-companies-are-finally-starting-invest-again
Gordon Brown is a potent weapon for the Scottish No campaign
The former PM retains a strong connection with the working class Scots who could determine the referendum result.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/04/gordon-brown-potent-weapon-scottish-no-campaign
As for electronic voting, while it has potential speed benefits, paper trails are called paper trails for a reason....
Hopefully we can all see the problems of a non-anonymous system, or even our current semi-anonymous system.
Voting fraud is possible in the current ballot paper system. But there are physical items - papers and ballot boxes - that can be watched and verified throughout the process. Candidates can have representatives checking that the papers and boxes are not tampered with throughout the process. This means that any fraud in an organised system should be at a low and individual level, for instance through ID fraud.
One of the reasons I am very nervous about postal voting is that it makes it easier for mid-level voting fraud. Electronic voting opens the door for mass fraud - there is no way for candidates or their representatives to check that the button that I pressed in the booth has been counted, or counted in the way I wanted. They cannot follow the bits through the system.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-27106954
I suspect he's going to persuade quite a lot of non-Scots they'd be better off if Yes won...
Other countries, such as Switzerland and parts of the US such as Oregon and Washington state seem to manage postal voting without undue problems.
Early voting within a week of the poll date, more secure electronic voting and moving the poll to the weekend would also be solid ideas. I'd also be happy with compulsory voting if the ballot paper included a none of the above box.
But I agree with your other points, especially compulsory voting. But as well as a 'none of the above', I would also include a 'I do not agree with this system' option. A certain threshold of the latter would trigger a debate on the voting system, and much fun on PB. ;-)
Facts, eh?
But people are keen to believe they're getting a raw deal compared with 'others'. It's why some Scots think they're being 'bullied' if people suggest they can't leave a country and keep the currency. Some people south of the border will conclude Scotland *is* getting a good deal at the expense of the rest of the UK.
Weekend voting - Saturday 7am - 10pm and Sunday 7am - 7pm should suffice and ensure we get most results in before the gentleman take to the brandy and cigars after dinner.
Wonder why the figures were kept secret by DWP, hard to be able to lie about them if you publish the evidence, better just to give it to a buffoon like Brown.
Titter ....
I suspect they don't want those who think "whoever you vote for, the politicians always get in" to vote in the first place. Which is all right so long as they're a small minority. But they're not, and as we boomers (to say nothing of our elders) die off, leaders elected on minorities by minorities will become the norm.
Perhaps what we need is a new Party, dedicated to opening the ballot boxes and exempting those who voted for it from taxation* - with a compensating increase for the rest of us, of course.
*And traffic offences - do the job properly...
Maybe more parties should consider it.
We can do better and we should.
Now this could be read as indicating that Mr Brown's speeches have plenty of room to make an impact, or the reverse. But he will have to say something new to be different from past discourse on the topic.
1) Cost. The system has to be staffed, and it may cost more for the poll and counting to take place at a weekend, when there may be overtime. Then again, surely non-volunteer staff get paid more for counting overnight?
2) People being near home. People are more likely to be in their home areas during the week, but perhaps this is offset by people being away working during the week?
These are probably wrong, though.
As I indicated earlier other jurisdictions manage postal voting perfectly well and I'm sure our own electoral authorities might learn from them.
Set against that, the board will want him to go quietly, so he'll probably have got more than what a court would have awarded him on that basis alone.
This has nothing to do with my 40-1 bet on that.
I'm not telling you who I've bet to be the next Man U manager but the odds are in 3 figures currently!!
Are there volunteer staff who don't get paid for counting votes? I did it at the 2010 election and got paid, about £140 as I recall. I got paid about the same for handing out ballot papers at a polling station for the last council elections and am to be paid £143 (plus £42 for attending the 4 fours training, plus mileage) for doing the Euro election in May.
Brown even tried to set up his own "Labour only" anti-Yes group rather than join Better Together. More splits from Brown as usual.
But yes he has indeed split the No campaign, so much for being better together and united.
Something that became increasingly clear to me about Gordon Brown the longer he was leader is that he was a man born out of his time. He would quite clearly have been much, much happier leading some Marxist state of the 1930s, in which he could simply exile or shoot anyone who disagreed with him. It took me a while to work out what it was about him that was so unpleasant, and I think it is this.
When as a youth I used to read accounts of life in Nazi-occupied Europe, I used to struggle to imagine what kind of people in Britain would have collaborated with them, in the way people collaborated with them in France and Holland and Poland. I have since realised that in a counterfactual history of the UK, in which we got occupied by the Nazis, the kind of people who'd have taken jobs whipping their neighbours into cattle trucks would have been people like Gordon Brown, Arthur Scargill, Damian McBride, and the kind of spittle-flecked UKIP supporter who posts comments under Daily Telegraph articles.
Basically, anyone whose political creed is based essentially on hatred for someone else, rather than on any positive values, would have loved such a job. I don't think many Labour or Tory figures would have done so.
But a very smart move by the fifth column Yes campaign.
The panel all said the posters weren't racist because they didn't play on skin colour (shock as real world differs from PB)... a couple said they played on fear, but then again so did the Tory (Blair eyes) posters.
The three callers were a single mum in a hostel who wanted to complain about council houses, so not at all on topic.. an anti UKIP lady who said that the posters weren't racist as they didn't play on race, but that UKIP were racist (wolves in sheeps clothing) & an angry pensioner who loved UKIP(!)
To sum up.. Not racist posters, and the Labour MP had made an error because calling everything racist makes tackling real racism more difficult.
Maybe there was a clause "if Utd finish outside top 4, dismissal will result in one years pay as compensation" ??
Has he been reading what I write on here?
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-04-22/farage-ive-been-accused-completely-erroneously/
My view is that it is very unlikely that Labour's position will change. It's hard to assess odds on something like this, but it would take odds of at least 10/1 or more for me to be tempted to bet on the proposition. However, I'm not keen to lay at odds like that because it would be a bit of a one-way 'fun' bet.
In no case does this show your argument that the Fed bailed out UK banks, they bailed out their own (local) banks some of whom happened to be subsidiaries with British parent companies (albeit badly run overexpanded, Scottish banks) to avoid the parent companies pulling the plug on them....
On postal voting, I'm in Jack W's camp - lots of countries have it as the norm without any problems, and it does seem to help turnout. We have a few constituencies with well-documented problems, and I favour massive monitoring efforts wherever that is suspected, but in most places the election passes without a single objection.
Mike is right that it kills the final days of the campaign - in Switzerland 90% or so vote by post, so in the last couple of days the parties just relax.I'm not sure that matters - effectively polling day is two days earlier, that's all, and because the votes are spread over a couple of weeks, it reduces the impact of any last-minute one-day wonder like a good or bad set of economic figures.
The present situation is loaded to parties with lots of money and/or organisation, and the Tories are blitzing marginals with letters containing filled-out postal vote application forms, with a request to sign them and return them to the party, who then take them to the ERO. EROs don't like this very much (as they feel uneasy at people turning up with large bundles of applications) but it's legal and nobody has really suggested a fiddle is in progress.I'd like to see the playing field levelled with EROs sending the forms to everyone to sign if they want to.