I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Going to be controversial and say this is based entirely on gut instinct (which has served me reasonably well in life)... The 2010 Tooting election result was impacted by voter fraud.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Going to be controversial and say this is based entirely on gut instinct (which has served me reasonably well in life)... The 2010 Tooting election result was impacted by voter fraud.
5% majority, that would have to be a heck of a lot of fraud. Seems unlikely.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Going to be controversial and say this is based entirely on gut instinct (which has served me reasonably well in life)... The 2010 Tooting election result was impacted by voter fraud.
Unexpected election results do not equal fraud without evidence.
Are your suspicions about personation or postal vote fraud?
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
There is a simple solution to personation, that costs almost nothing and does not disproportionately affect the young, the poor and the urban.
It is for those who arrive at the polling station without ID to have their photo taken.
There are alternatives that are similarly zero cost. One could reserve those ballots cast by those without ID to the side, and they are only verified and counted in the event that they affect the final result, which would also cut to zero personation.
Both of these solve personation, costs essentially zero, but don't have the side effect of suppressing turnout of certain demographic groups.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
The simple solution is not compulsory photo ID for voting: it is signed photos of all those who wish to vote without photo ID.
That stops voter ID fraud, while not deliberately reducing turnout in some demographic groups.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Going to be controversial and say this is based entirely on gut instinct (which has served me reasonably well in life)... The 2010 Tooting election result was impacted by voter fraud.
Unexpected election results do not equal fraud without evidence.
Are your suspicions about personation or postal vote fraud?
PV. But as i said, gut instinct. And yes, unexpected result does not equate to fraud.
If the PM was really interested in cracking down on electoral fraud he'd make obtaining a postal vote much harder but that's not going to happen given how many Tories use postals.
The more the left whine at the injustice of it all and how it is going to adversely affect the voters Boris courts, the more likely one is attracted to looking at the doublethink aspect to their attack.
Er... does 'the left' = @TSE these days? My how the world changes.
Especially as the current government is introducing some of the most hard left policies today.
Mrs Thatcher is spinning in her grave at the plans for more state aid.
A Conservative government, A Conservative government doing that.
Conservative governments often used to do that before Mrs Thatcher, and even Mrs Thatcher in her early days spent more on state aid as a percentage of GDP than is currently contemplated.
If the PM was really interested in cracking down on electoral fraud he'd make obtaining a postal vote much harder but that's not going to happen given how many Tories use postals.
The more the left whine at the injustice of it all and how it is going to adversely affect the voters Boris courts, the more likely one is attracted to looking at the doublethink aspect to their attack.
Er... does 'the left' = @TSE these days? My how the world changes.
Especially as the current government is introducing some of the most hard left policies today.
Mrs Thatcher is spinning in her grave at the plans for more state aid.
A Conservative government, A Conservative government doing that.
Conservative governments often used to do that before Mrs Thatcher, and even Mrs Thatcher in her early days spent more on state aid as a percentage of GDP than is currently contemplated.
It is horrendous. If i wasnt invested so much in them i would wander off.
And did the Chicago Tribune - a Republican newspaper - investigate goings on downstate?
It's a shame there were no Democratic Chicago newspapers to flag this flagrant Republican fraud up to the FBI, Justice Department and the Federal grand jury who eventually investigated voter fraud in the election. Of course, the fact that Adlai Stephenson III came from 15 points behind in the polls to 0.15 points behind in the voting does rather suggest that the investigation was correct to focus on the Democrats.
Voter fraud is evil - as is voter suppression. The later is NOT a cure-all for the former.
Voter ID isn't voter suppression. At least, it hasn't been for however many years Norway, Germany, Switzerland, France, Israel, Iceland, etc. have asked for it.
All those countries have compulsory ID cards, though.
If there is a problem with personation, it can be solved as I have described, at 1% of the cost, and with no voter suppression.
What is your method?
I've only described it about 300x.
Here's the 301st
No ID?
No problem, we use this instant camera to take a photo of you, and you sign the back of the photo.
Later, if you like, you can take a sample of those photos and go visit and check the person voting was who they said they were.
But, in reality, people who commit crimes don't like to have their photo taken in commission of the crime.
It's low cost, doesn't suppress voting, and will eliminate and personation that might exist.
One minor point. Surely all cameras nowadays are "instant cameras". One imagines you've been touting this (fairly good) suggestion since Polaroids were a thing.
The photos should be physical, so that they can be signed. That can be a digital camera and a printer. But I don't want electronic photos (at least not solely electronic), because that brings with it other risks.
Bonkers Robert, sorry. If you're going to all of that faff, which would put huge strain on election staff in a very short space of time, then you can sort out your photo ID in advance of voting in the unlikely event that you have neither a passport, a driving licence or one of the other acceptable IDs on their list.
This is a non story.
Repeal of the FTPA is, on the other hand, exciting. Not unexpected of course but still wonderful. We will back to all that febrile speculation of 'Will the PM call an election?'
And the answer to that general question is that yes I think he will. May 2023.
Have you actually been invlolved in an election in the UK?
Let's think about this:
If lots of people don't casually carry photo ID, therefore imposing a "burden" on polling staff, then that's a lot of people who are going to be affected by this law. A group that is predominantly young, poor and urban.
If not a lot of people are effected, then it's not a particular burden.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Somewhere between 30-60,000 people died during the course of Operation Condor in the Seventies, not to mention tens of thousands more who were raped and tortured. Around 350 died at the hands of the security forces in Northern Ireland. That seems like a lot of difference to me.
As well as the 350 known deaths there are a number where collusion between Crown forces and terrorists seemed to take place. The murder of Patrick Finucane for example.
Certainly the CIA supported death squads of Operation Condor were brutal, but call me old fashioned. I would rather that Crown forces didn't commit extrajudicial killings.
You're looking at a few dozen cases, not hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands; in the course of figthing extremely brutal enemies.
I would wish that our conduct in war was perfect, but you know very well that it will never be so. I do know the behaviour of the security forces was infinitely better than that of the organisations they were fighting.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
I vaguely recall some minor changes on postal voting but I do think it is important that the integrity of our system is protected. OTOH I also agree that voting should be easy and encouraged. The methodology of the Republican party in the US has no place in this country or indeed any country claiming to be a democracy.
Personation seems to me to be an unlikely way of seeking to influence an election result. It requires disproportionate effort and quite a lot of different people unless you are willing to take silly risks. Vote farming in care homes or communities which are not a part of the mainstream, where females in the family are strongly discouraged from speaking to males outside it are obvious examples and more indicative of what the Judge found. I am not sure that this Bill addresses the real issue.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Going to be controversial and say this is based entirely on gut instinct (which has served me reasonably well in life)... The 2010 Tooting election result was impacted by voter fraud.
Unexpected election results do not equal fraud without evidence.
Are your suspicions about personation or postal vote fraud?
PV. But as i said, gut instinct. And yes, unexpected result does not equate to fraud.
It wasn’t really an unexpected result. It swung significantly Tory, but not quite to the extent of the national trend. Subsequent elections have made clear that demographic change accounts for that. It’s now safe Labour rather than marginal Labour.
I vaguely recall some minor changes on postal voting but I do think it is important that the integrity of our system is protected. OTOH I also agree that voting should be easy and encouraged. The methodology of the Republican party in the US has no place in this country or indeed any country claiming to be a democracy.
Personation seems to me to be an unlikely way of seeking to influence an election result. It requires disproportionate effort and quite a lot of different people unless you are willing to take silly risks. Vote farming in care homes or communities which are not a part of the mainstream, where females in the family are strongly discouraged from speaking to males outside it are obvious examples and more indicative of what the Judge found. I am not sure that this Bill addresses the real issue.
The funny thing is that having to produce photo ID will not affect me in the slightest. I carry my driving license with me everywhere and have done for over 10 years.
It’s just the fannying about with people having to go home and get ID (which they wont, they’ll give up) or provisional ballots that have to be verified to solve a problem that barely exists is just ridiculous.
The fact that the Troubles were a huge fuck up on all sides is something we haven't come to terms with. The most egregious errors were sins of omission in the period before troops were deployed. The UK and ROI didn't want to see the shitshow brewing, and the NI government didn't care.
The NI government didn’t care. I think Uk/RoI were reluctant to intervene rather than not wanting to see the shitshow.
I remember the Troubles being on the TV throughout my childhood.
The Ballymurphy verdict though. Jesus. A moment of real shame for the British army, and astonishing how we covered it up, and dragged our feet over allowing the truth to come out for 50 years.
And 5 months later they sent 1 PARA into Derry to do it all again. Still, Johnny Mercer, eh?
I know. Which is why I don't think that it should only be squaddies in the Dock, apart from the impossibility of a fair trial after such a time. The officers, both junior and senior knew what was going on, and let it happen again. It was our own mini Mai Lai, and must have been a massive recruiter for the PIRA.
Yes it was a massive recruiter for PIRA and no they weren't acting like Latin American death squads.
I know that you were there, though a bit later, I think.
I think by the late Seventies the British Army was much better trained and disciplined in its approach, which (along with the ending of internment and usage of supergrass testimony) led to a significant drop in violence.
I don't think there was a lot of difference between the MRF and Latin American death squads.
Somewhere between 30-60,000 people died during the course of Operation Condor in the Seventies, not to mention tens of thousands more who were raped and tortured. Around 350 died at the hands of the security forces in Northern Ireland. That seems like a lot of difference to me.
As well as the 350 known deaths there are a number where collusion between Crown forces and terrorists seemed to take place. The murder of Patrick Finucane for example.
Certainly the CIA supported death squads of Operation Condor were brutal, but call me old fashioned. I would rather that Crown forces didn't commit extrajudicial killings.
You're looking at a few dozen cases, not hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands; in the course of figthing extremely brutal enemies.
I would wish that our conduct in war was perfect, but you know very well that it will never be so. I do know the behaviour of the security forces was infinitely better than that of the organisations they were fighting.
If one wants to be critical, it's that the behavior of the Protestant paramilitaries was no better than the Republicans, yet they were in many cases protected by the security forces.
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
The funny thing is that having to produce photo ID will not affect me in the slightest. I carry my driving license with me everywhere and have done for over 10 years.
It’s just the fannying about with people having to go home and get ID (which they wont, they’ll give up) or provisional ballots that have to be verified to solve a problem that barely exists is just ridiculous.
So how do we persuade a Conservative government that the practical (and small c conservative ) solution is to keep things in perspective.
Shouting about "voter suppression" is as nonsense here as it is in the USA. It's just a stupid, wasteful petty bureaucratic and meddlesome response to a very small problem.
NEW YORK — Andrew Yang’s pro-Israel tweet Monday night won him the support of Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz, and the scorn of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — typically not a great turn for a would-be Democratic candidate for mayor.
But Yang’s pro-Israel stance is well within the mainstream of New York Democratic politics in a city that is home to more Jews than almost any other in the world. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo are both ardent supporters of Israel.
And Yang — who was already being targeted by left-leaning groups for his more moderate political stances — was not the only Democratic mayoral candidate to speak in support of Israel amid attacks in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem and air strikes in Gaza in recent days.
But as the current frontrunner, who has made a strong pitch for Jewish support in his mayoral campaign, Yang has drawn the most outcry over his stance — especially as it comes amid Eid al-Fitr, one of the most important Muslim religious holidays, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
“I'm standing with the people of Israel who are coming under bombardment attacks, and condemn the Hamas terrorists,” Yang tweeted on Monday night. “The people of NYC will always stand with our brothers and sisters in Israel who face down terrorism and persevere.”
Jewish leaders voiced their support on Twitter, as did prominent Republicans like Cruz, Donald Trump Jr., former Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Meghan McCain.
“I certainly would never ask for or want their support," Yang said when asked Tuesday to respond to the tweets during a campaign stop.
But others excoriated the candidate for not mentioning Palestine or acknowledging Palestinian victims. Yang was scheduled to join the Astoria Welfare Society to distribute groceries in the heavily Muslim area ahead of Eid, but told reporters he was asked to stay away following backlash over the tweet.
“The organizers of the event decided it would be better if we did not attend and we were happy to abide by that choice,” he said when asked by NY1 why the Tuesday event was removed from his schedule. . . .
Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — who represents parts of western Queens and has so far avoided getting involved in the mayor’s race — tweeted Tuesday that Yang’s appearance in the neighborhood was unwelcome. . . .
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Ray McGuire, both fellow Democratic mayoral candidates, made similar statements in support of Israel, but they did not draw the level of national attention Yang did. . . .
Former nonprofit CEO Dianne Morales, who is running for mayor as an unapologetic leftist, was the sole candidate to mention Palestine. . . .
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
But we have a system that already works and has shown no sign of having any integrity problems. Its a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
Like others have said, the weakness of the system is postal voting and this proposed bill does nothing to preserve the integrity of that. I wonder why?
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Voter ID is ID cards by the back door.
I have proposed two cheap, essentially 100% effective, methods of eliminating personation, that don't suppress voter turnout, and don't effectively introduce ID cards.
How is compulsory photo ID superior to either of my suggestions?
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND - Regardless of the rights and wrongs, whys and wherefores of the current situation re: Israel v Palestine, Yang's (and Adams's) pro-Israel move is smart politics in NYC.
Especially when you consider the large number of Jewish voters in the likely electorate. PLUS fact that the Scott Stringer, who has been in 3rd place for much of the race and who is Jewish, has been accused of sexual harassment and is both highly unlikely to win the Democratic nomination.
While many Jewish voters are in fact progressives who are either ant- or non-Zionist and/or troubled by the Palestinian Question, more are pro-Israel to some degree from mildly to very strongly.
Yang and Adams are making a play for the latter in general, and for Jewish voters who were planning to back Stringer but are now having 2nd thoughts. Also, under the new Ranked Choice voting system, the second preferences of folks who DO give Stringer their #1 could REALLY help either Yang or Adams end up on top when all is said and done.
And of the two, my guess is that Yang is most likely to benefit from his pro-Israeli position. But this is NOT carved in stone, by any means.
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
Tolerance and equality are not synonymous with “the left”
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND - Regardless of the rights and wrongs, whys and wherefores of the current situation re: Israel v Palestine, Yang's (and Adams's) pro-Israel move is smart politics in NYC.
Especially when you consider the large number of Jewish voters in the likely electorate. PLUS fact that the Scott Stringer, who has been in 3rd place for much of the race and who is Jewish, has been accused of sexual harassment and is both highly unlikely to win the Democratic nomination.
While many Jewish voters are in fact progressives who are either ant- or non-Zionist and/or troubled by the Palestinian Question, more are pro-Israel to some degree from mildly to very strongly.
Yang and Adams are making a play for the latter in general, and for Jewish voters who were planning to back Stringer but are now having 2nd thoughts. Also, under the new Ranked Choice voting system, the second preferences of folks who DO give Stringer their #1 could REALLY help either Yang or Adams end up on top when all is said and done.
And of the two, my guess is that Yang is most likely to benefit from his pro-Israeli position. But this is NOT carved in stone, by any means.
American Jews are indeed increasingly more critical of Israel, although among the rightwing half the bedrock support is still there. The branch of my wife's family in the US are much more critical of Netanyahu than anyone else in the current conflict.
I would wish that our conduct in war was perfect, but you know very well that it will never be so. I do know the behaviour of the security forces was infinitely better than that of the organisations they were fighting.
If one wants to be critical, it's that the behavior of the Protestant paramilitaries was no better than the Republicans, yet they were in many cases protected by the security forces.
Some informants were protected, even as they committed crimes (the same was true of some informants within Republican organisations). But, I think the use of informants did more to harm than help Loyalist terrorist organisations. Thousands ended up in jail after all. In fact, the authorities were generally more successful at getting arrests and convictions for crimes committed by loyalists than for those committed by republicans.
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Voter ID is ID cards by the back door.
I have proposed two cheap, essentially 100% effective, methods of eliminating personation, that don't suppress voter turnout, and don't effectively introduce ID cards.
How is compulsory photo ID superior to either of my suggestions?
If someone does not have a photo ID, against what database would you be comparing your sample of signed photos?
I wrote a blog, that was refused on here as it happens, a few years ago suggesting exactly this, in order to sift out the over represented political nerds
Tory sleaze stories only affected voting intention among highly engaged voters
“ One group we have seen move away from the Conservatives in the last three weeks, however, is the very politically engaged. As well as weighting by demographic and past voting behaviour to ensure our samples are representative of the overall public, YouGov also weights by how much attention they pay to politics on a scale of 0 to 10. Anyone who self-reports themselves as an 8, 9 or 10 out of 10, we define as having a high political attention. Anyone answering 3-7 is defined as medium attention and 0-2 is low attention.”
Yes, that's interesting. I don't think one can quite conclude "it therefore doesn't make any difference", because highly engaged voters can be opinion leaders, directly by influencing others over time or indirectly by acting as canaries in the coal mine (if stories like that persist they will percolate down to the moderately interested etc.).
They started doing it in 2015. @viewcode told me after I had written that blog that they were doing so. If I had known I might well have backed Labour to do well in 2017, as YouGov were picking up their surge way before others
Quite the contrast - political nerds thought the wallpaper mattered, the public didn’t
Two ways of reading that though. One is the narrative you describe- it's a nerd/village/bubble story. The Great British Public have assimilated the story and rejected it. Maybe that's true.
The other is that this stuff does matter, but takes a while to take on its significance. That the nerds have got there first, not because they're smarter or better, but just because they give it more headspace. More fool them/us, really. But that over time, others will join them in agreeing that this just isn't on, when they get round to giving it attention.
That issue is at the heart of a lot of campaigning; it's why Liberal Democrats produce a bajillion leaflets at every election. It's why Ali Campbell and Dom Cummings insisted ruthlessly on endless repetition of trite slogans; because messages take time to seep into the public consciousness. Not hours or days- but months or years.
Does this story have legs? Far too early to tell.
And how many times will the public need to hear "the PMs wallpaper was paid for privately" before they get outraged?
People are more easily outraged if they're on the hook for expenditure.
You've fallen for the spin that it is about wallpaper. If you were told that, say, Keir Starmer had taken a £58,000 bribe, you might raise an eyebrow. That of course is to spin it the other way. My own view is that Boris has inadvertently tied himself up in technical offences. We shall see.
The Electoral Commission (much vaunted on this thread) is said to be investigating more than one possible offence.
And if I think its about wallpaper and my eyes glaze over when you start banging on about it again, what odds that others are going to take it differently when you keep repeating the story.
Stuartinromford is right that people listen to or remember a story the more you repeat it - but it helps tremendously if its a story they care about in the first place.
As mentioned before, after Watergate, President Nixon was re-elected by what is still a record margin.
If offences are found to have been committed, then what an unengaged public thinks this week might not be relevant.
Watergate, the scandal, happened years later. At the time it was just a break-in.
That is rather the point. Only those paying attention to Watergate knew it was more than a failed burglary. Ditto Wallpapergate.
But we were caveating the chances of the Tories in Hartlepool with ‘national polls closing because of Wallpapergate’ when most people couldn’t give a flying!
Political junkies over react to everything, because they want to be seen to be the first to have called a trend. The ones they call incorrectly get forgotten so it’s a permanent state of over sensitivity to events
Although EICIPM is chiefly remembered for eating a bacon sandwich
Off top my head, Labour lowered voting age 21 to 18 in 66 - 70 parliament. Did anyone actually argue against at the time?
People leaving school at 15 getting jobs. Sex lives and married at 16? Dying in military service, before allowed to vote? Was there really an argument against?
I beg to move Amendment No. 1, in page 1, line 8, leave out "eighteen" and insert "twenty". The Amendment is supported by a number of hon. Members on the other side of the House who have added their names which for technical reasons are not printed on the Notice Paper. In short, it has the support of most of those hon. Members who sat on Mr. Speaker's Conference, together with a number of other hon. Members who did not take part in the conference... While the proceedings of the conference cannot be reported, I think I am entitled to say that many of its members came to it with a strong bias in favour of reducing the age to 18. As a result of their inquiries, however, they concluded that 18 was too young and that 20 was a more appropriate age...
Just because, in future, a young man will be able to enter into a binding hire-purchase contract or marry without parental consent at the age of 18, surely he will not suffer from any sense of injustice if he is told that Parliament has decided that the voting age, which is entirely different, should be 20... the important issue is the age of mental maturity reached by young people which should entitle them, in the interests of our electoral system, to have a vote. We all agree that 15 or 16 would be too young and that 25 would be too old. Therefore, we have to consider the right age from the point of view of mental maturity...
It has been argued that, although the view may be that young people at 18 are not sufficiently mature mentally to judge reasonably about political affairs and differentiate between the records and policies of different parties, the same can be said of a large number of adults. No one denies that. However, it is a very bad reason for adding three million new voters to the register...
we received convincing and overwhelming evidence that most young people between the ages of 18 and 21 did not want a reduction in the voting age. It is not that these people, when asked if they wanted the voting age reduced to 18, were indifferent and said, "We really do not mind." They were definitely opposed to the idea and thought it wrong that the voting age should be reduced to 18.
My point being, and all very on topic, these arguments against change for the better afterwards soon start to age and look, not just embarrassing, but credibility shredding.
A bit like another corker in late 60’s - equal pay for women. Did anyone actually go on record saying, I don’t support equal pay for women and here’s my reasoning why they should lose this court case? 😆
Not just equal pay for women. When the soldiers returned after the two world wars, women lost their factory jobs in favour of men. And until 1919 female teachers had to be unmarried, so had to leave the profession on walking down the aisle.
All of this plays into my belief that rather than older people becoming more small-c conservative, it is rather that the zeitgeist moves to the left.
And occasionally to what might be described as the Right. See attitudes to pre and extra marital sex at the beginning and end of the 19th C. And the levels of casual violence, car theft and burglary deemed acceptable just 40 years ago.
As I said to my priest "It isn't premarital sex if I never get married"
Or as her priest said to my aunt “marriage is a state of mind”
I get a sense of shame from a single incident of criminal behaviour by a British soldier, because I hold us to the very highest of standards. So there's no doubt this is embarrassing.
However, there do seem to be double standards where we don't talk about IRA and Loyalist paramilitary crimes anymore, still less prosecute them, but we keep doing so for British soldiers 50 years ago.
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Thanks for your reply - pretty much what I thought SA practice was but good to get details from someone who's been there and done that - and actually participated in helping conduct elections.
In particular the first free, fair AND universal suffrage election in the history of South Africa. Which for all its flaws was and remains an inspiration to the world.
Many of us would have liked to have been their. But you were actually there, at the cusp of history. I envy you!
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND - Regardless of the rights and wrongs, whys and wherefores of the current situation re: Israel v Palestine, Yang's (and Adams's) pro-Israel move is smart politics in NYC.
Especially when you consider the large number of Jewish voters in the likely electorate. PLUS fact that the Scott Stringer, who has been in 3rd place for much of the race and who is Jewish, has been accused of sexual harassment and is both highly unlikely to win the Democratic nomination.
While many Jewish voters are in fact progressives who are either ant- or non-Zionist and/or troubled by the Palestinian Question, more are pro-Israel to some degree from mildly to very strongly.
Yang and Adams are making a play for the latter in general, and for Jewish voters who were planning to back Stringer but are now having 2nd thoughts. Also, under the new Ranked Choice voting system, the second preferences of folks who DO give Stringer their #1 could REALLY help either Yang or Adams end up on top when all is said and done.
And of the two, my guess is that Yang is most likely to benefit from his pro-Israeli position. But this is NOT carved in stone, by any means.
Its interesting that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come out against him. She was always likely to oppose such a moderate candidate and support someone more left wing but it will be a test of how much influence she has amongst the Party membership.
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Voter ID is ID cards by the back door.
I have proposed two cheap, essentially 100% effective, methods of eliminating personation, that don't suppress voter turnout, and don't effectively introduce ID cards.
How is compulsory photo ID superior to either of my suggestions?
If someone does not have a photo ID, against what database would you be comparing your sample of signed photos?
Our goal here is two fold:
1. To make sure that fraud can't affect election results 2. To make it a higher risk proposition to commit electoral fraud
Each ballot, as I'm sure you know, is numbered. It's perfectly possible to find out who voted a certain way by tallying the ballot number with the number recorded next to the voters name. In the event that the number of "no ID" votes were enough to swing the outcome one could then go through the individual ballots confirming each one manually by turning up at the address of every voter to confirm they match the photo.
You would also want to do a sweep of (say) one in ten voters. This would enable you to see if personation was common and to find specific instances. If you wanted to up the security, you could record fingerprints at the polling station too.
I get a sense of shame from a single incident of criminal behaviour by a British soldier, because I hold us to the very highest of standards. So there's no doubt this is embarrassing.
However, there do seem to be double standards where we don't talk about IRA and Loyalist paramilitary crimes anymore, still less prosecute them, but we keep doing so for British soldiers 50 years ago.
I thought one of the main points of the Good Friday Agreement was to draw a line under all the sh*t that had been done by both sides and move on? Obviously that applies to British soldiers as much as it does the IRA.
I guess it is open to us, the British, to be critical about our own side as a learning exercise though.
One of the incidents of the troubles that has haunted me most in reading about it is the story of an 18-year soldier being separated from his unit, I forget which. I think he was from inner-city Sheffield and it was his first tour.
He was patrolling the heavily republican area of Londonderry with his section when he became separated and got lost, wandering the streets on his own. Eventually a crowd emerged that surrounded him and starting hurling abuse at him and throwing objects.
He sat down and started crying for his mum - absolutely terrified. A few of the women had sympathy and started debating whether or not to escort him back to the army base.
It was too late. Another woman had telephoned the IRA and a paramilitary arrived within minutes with a pistol, parted the crowd, made his way up to then lad and executed him on the spot.
@rcs1000 ultimately this is a completely pointless argument because the government has decided we need photo ID to vote, because reasons, so that’s what is going to happen. Consequences be damned.
1. You can't compare 1q to 4q 2. There's a pandemic 3. There was stockpiling, and then the unwinding of sociology
We will only know the true impact in six to nine months time. It may be that Brexit has been a disaster. It may be that it has no measurable impact. It may be that it was positive.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
There is a simple solution to personation, that costs almost nothing and does not disproportionately affect the young, the poor and the urban.
It is for those who arrive at the polling station without ID to have their photo taken.
There are alternatives that are similarly zero cost. One could reserve those ballots cast by those without ID to the side, and they are only verified and counted in the event that they affect the final result, which would also cut to zero personation.
Both of these solve personation, costs essentially zero, but don't have the side effect of suppressing turnout of certain demographic groups.
That's not really an alternative to ID, that's still asking for ID but having a fallback option if people don't have ID with them.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Problem is NOT stopping fraud - that's GOOD.
Problem is PRETENDING to fix fraud, when vast preponderance of EVIDENCE is that, in order to fix a rare problem, you make voter disenfranchisement a much bigger problem, esp. for the eligible citizens who lose their vote in the process - that's BAD.
Unless you're religion forbids it, killing a pesky fly is a good thing. Using a bazooka to do it is NOT.
Asking someone to show photo ID is reasonable. I know it may seem different from a US perspective because, unfortunately, it all too often goes hand in hand with other voter suppression techniques (eg limiting number of polling stations).
I can't see what the problem is with basing the system on trust. I don't want us to be like every other country in the world that doesn't trust people to do anything without showing ID. The vast majority of people can be trusted to be honest.
Most accusations of electoral fraud centre around farming of postal votes. I don't see how photo ID helps with that, or with people being incorrectly on the electoral register in the first place.
I suppose we could go back to the days when postal voting was hard to get approved, rather than on request. That would probably help more than anything else.
I get a sense of shame from a single incident of criminal behaviour by a British soldier, because I hold us to the very highest of standards. So there's no doubt this is embarrassing.
However, there do seem to be double standards where we don't talk about IRA and Loyalist paramilitary crimes anymore, still less prosecute them, but we keep doing so for British soldiers 50 years ago.
Your shame speaks well of you. It is also how one SHOULD feel when your country does wrong.
With the Union in 1800, the British parliament and government assumed responsibility.
If you drop it, break it, fold, spindle or mutilate it, it's YOURS.
In USA my personal position has always been, prosecuting ONLY the small fry like Lt Calley was wrong, the blame was NOT his and his troops alone.
Same is true of crimes committed by British soldiers.
Governments MUST be held - and hold themselves - to higher standards IF their claim to legitimacy is to be worth a damn.
May take a while - and fifty years is but a blink in the eye of God.
Truth AND reconciliation. Not perfect, but nothing on this earth ever is.
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
If people are losing votes this is obviously a concern in itself - but the checking and verification arrangements are nowadays sufficiently tight that no-one else would be able to get a fraudulent vote past the first stage of the verification process. Maybe there should be more publicity about the existing checks that are made on postal votes, since these are unlikely to be widely understood (even here, as we saw yesterday)
'there are currently nine open investigations into Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s conduct – more than double the number of voter fraud convictions in 2019.'
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
There is a simple solution to personation, that costs almost nothing and does not disproportionately affect the young, the poor and the urban.
It is for those who arrive at the polling station without ID to have their photo taken.
There are alternatives that are similarly zero cost. One could reserve those ballots cast by those without ID to the side, and they are only verified and counted in the event that they affect the final result, which would also cut to zero personation.
Both of these solve personation, costs essentially zero, but don't have the side effect of suppressing turnout of certain demographic groups.
That's not really an alternative to ID, that's still asking for ID but having a fallback option if people don't have ID with them.
This is however the 21st century which means we can use 21st century solutions rather than 19th century ones.
The thing is that the wrong question is being asked.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Problem is NOT stopping fraud - that's GOOD.
Problem is PRETENDING to fix fraud, when vast preponderance of EVIDENCE is that, in order to fix a rare problem, you make voter disenfranchisement a much bigger problem, esp. for the eligible citizens who lose their vote in the process - that's BAD.
Unless you're religion forbids it, killing a pesky fly is a good thing. Using a bazooka to do it is NOT.
Asking someone to show photo ID is reasonable. I know it may seem different from a US perspective because, unfortunately, it all too often goes hand in hand with other voter suppression techniques (eg limiting number of polling stations).
No. It isn’t reasonable because it’s unnecessary and not everyone has photo ID.
The current system works. You turn up and vote. If someone else has voted as you, you’ll know about it immediately. There is not a problem here that needs to be fixed therefore there must be a ulterior motive.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Would you agree that fraudulent postal voting is more of an issue than personation?
I don’t know the stats so wouldn’t be comfortable being definitive but many of the electoral fraud stories I remember reading involve abuse of postal votes.
So I would have no problem going back to the (pre-Blair?) restrictions on who can get postal votes. Even though I’ve used one for as long as I can remember and it makes life far simpler for me personally
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Thanks for your reply - pretty much what I thought SA practice was but good to get details from someone who's been there and done that - and actually participated in helping conduct elections.
In particular the first free, fair AND universal suffrage election in the history of South Africa. Which for all its flaws was and remains an inspiration to the world.
Many of us would have liked to have been their. But you were actually there, at the cusp of history. I envy you!
I first went to South Africa a few weeks after the election, with a pregnant Mrs Foxy. We got a very good deal because of widespread expectations that there would be political violence in both Kwazulu-Natal, in the mining townships and by breakaway Afrikaaner groups. My itinerary avoided the likely trouble spots.
It was a great atmosphere, with everyone seeming relieved that the new democratic dawn had happened without too much trouble. A unique moment in history.
I remember thinking at the time that who could have thought 10 years previously that the Communist Party would be in government in South Africa, and illegal in Russia.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Would you agree that fraudulent postal voting is more of an issue than personation?
I don’t know the stats so wouldn’t be comfortable being definitive but many of the electoral fraud stories I remember reading involve abuse of postal votes.
So I would have no problem going back to the (pre-Blair?) restrictions on who can get postal votes. Even though I’ve used one for as long as I can remember and it makes life far simpler for me personally
That’s great but that isn’t what the government is proposing in their grand crusade against “voter fraud”.
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
If people are losing votes this is obviously a concern in itself - but the checking and verification arrangements are nowadays sufficiently tight that no-one else would be able to get a fraudulent vote past the first stage of the verification process. Maybe there should be more publicity about the existing checks that are made on postal votes, since these are unlikely to be widely understood (even here, as we saw yesterday)
The whole voter registration system needs to be looked at. My daughter lives in Bournemouth and is registered to vote there. As an oversight I have not removed from the voters roll at my house. Therefore she could have voted twice in the UK elections last Thursday. The system for voter registration needs to be upgraded, using the tax and benefits system to ensure that someone can only be registered to vote at one address and that they actually exist.
I could record Donald Trump as living at my address and he would get a polling card no problem.
What do you take from that Scott? It seems to me to confirm that there was a lot of stock piling in Q4 to avoid problems and potential additional costs depending on the deal where tariffs were still a theoretical option until late on. There were clearly some problems in January as the new systems took effect but you hear less and less of this now.
Our demand was also significantly reduced by the new lockdown in January and GDP fell across the quarter. It is really much too early to tell if there has been any rebalancing of our trade with the EU. There unquestionably needs to be. I think it will be at least another 6 months before any trend is clear.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
I get a sense of shame from a single incident of criminal behaviour by a British soldier, because I hold us to the very highest of standards. So there's no doubt this is embarrassing.
However, there do seem to be double standards where we don't talk about IRA and Loyalist paramilitary crimes anymore, still less prosecute them, but we keep doing so for British soldiers 50 years ago.
Your shame speaks well of you. It is also how one SHOULD feel when your country does wrong.
With the Union in 1800, the British parliament and government assumed responsibility.
If you drop it, break it, fold, spindle or mutilate it, it's YOURS.
In USA my personal position has always been, prosecuting ONLY the small fry like Lt Calley was wrong, the blame was NOT his and his troops alone.
Same is true of crimes committed by British soldiers.
Governments MUST be held - and hold themselves - to higher standards IF their claim to legitimacy is to be worth a damn.
May take a while - and fifty years is but a blink in the eye of God.
Truth AND reconciliation. Not perfect, but nothing on this earth ever is.
There is a good double standard and a bad one. The good double standard is that just because our enemies commit crimes, that does not entitle us to do so.
The bad double standard is just to focus on crimes committed by our side, while ignoring, exonerating, or excusing the crimes committed by our enemies.
Digging out your passport to vote is a pain in the arse. You can’t pop in to vote any more.
The government should be looking to increase turnout. Nearly 60% of people didn’t bother in Hartlepool. You don’t have to think too hard about why the government doesn’t do anything about that.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Digging out your passport to vote is a pain in the arse. You can’t pop in to vote any more.
The government should be looking to increase turnout. Nearly 60% of people didn’t bother in Hartlepool. You don’t have to think too hard about why the government doesn’t do anything about that.
Those people didn’t vote because they didn’t believe in the integrity of the system mate. Photo ID is going to solve that. Rejoice.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Voter ID is ID cards by the back door.
I have proposed two cheap, essentially 100% effective, methods of eliminating personation, that don't suppress voter turnout, and don't effectively introduce ID cards.
How is compulsory photo ID superior to either of my suggestions?
Compulsory ID is far superior in achieving the governments objectives as it will:
1 Ensure Labour & Lib Dems (and whats left of the liberal Tories in parliament) get shouty about protecting rights for the underclass rather than focus on jobs and health for the masses. 2 Help the government party get a higher proportion of votes in future elections through disenfranchisement.
Your solution does neither I'm afraid, back to the drawing board.
I support Voter and photo ID based on what I experienced as a Lib Dem Leader in Woking Council in 2012 where one of my councillors was found guilty of voter fraud. We knew widespread voter fraud was going on for at least 8 years prior to this - in all parties in Maybury and Sheerwater ward - but it could never be proven because of witnesses being too scared to come forward. My own councillor, who I suspected was guilty, tried to use all sorts of intimidation to undermine me and discredit my leadership with my own party members. It did work where eventually I decided not to restand as leader of the group in 2013. However, my wife and I were proved right in denying party funds be used in his defence. I just felt sorry for the poor suckers who were fooled into funding his legal defence costs on an individual basis.
Woking was one of the pilot councils who implemented voter ID to ensure that elections were free and fair. It hasn't suppressed voter turnout and support for anti-Tory parties actually increased last week in Woking.
Over the country as a whole, the problem is very small and hardly ever affects election results.
I wouldn't have a problem with extra ID checks in the few area where problems have taken place — but of course that would be deemed to be unacceptable for discriminating against certain places. The modern religion is "all or nothing" when it comes to this type of problem.
"Hardly ever affects election results" - sorry, but we should have zero tolerance to the possibility of it EVER affecting election results.
I'm appalled that people are so cavalier about this, when there is a very simple step to prevent it.
Problem is NOT stopping fraud - that's GOOD.
Problem is PRETENDING to fix fraud, when vast preponderance of EVIDENCE is that, in order to fix a rare problem, you make voter disenfranchisement a much bigger problem, esp. for the eligible citizens who lose their vote in the process - that's BAD.
Unless you're religion forbids it, killing a pesky fly is a good thing. Using a bazooka to do it is NOT.
Asking someone to show photo ID is reasonable. I know it may seem different from a US perspective because, unfortunately, it all too often goes hand in hand with other voter suppression techniques (eg limiting number of polling stations).
Interestingly, Washington State law DOES require government-issued photo ID when one initially registers to vote.
But you are NOT required to submit ID when you vote via postal ballot (returned either by mail, in person OR drop box) which covers the vast majority of ballots cast. OR when you show up at a voting center and are already registered.
In all cases you are required to provide a valid signature, that is you return ballot sig is checked against one on file, from when you registered OR updated you signature, because maybe you handwriting has deteriorated or changed due to age or infirmity.
Bottom line is, you do NOT need to present voter ID in order to cast your vote PROVIDED it's been checked already. With the sig check - of EVERY voted ballot - giving a high level of added security.
In WA the biggest problem - itself very small - has NOT been fraud in voting, but rather fraud with signatures submitted to qualify initiative and referendum measures for the ballot.
Several cases where signature checks revealed phony sigs. Interestingly, upon investigation the culprits turned out NOT to be the actual sponsors of proposed ballot measures, but people they hired to collect signatures for them. Or rather, the people the people they hired hired! Who were trying to make a few more bucks for no work.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
International observers have commented on the trust-based nature of British general elections and recommended that asking for voter ID could improve the integrity of polls.
So all the Government is doing is following the recommendation of observers.
Yes we all know it's completely insane and doesn't resolve any of the real issues that has been identified but it does seem to be - we need to tick this box, job done.
I get a sense of shame from a single incident of criminal behaviour by a British soldier, because I hold us to the very highest of standards. So there's no doubt this is embarrassing.
However, there do seem to be double standards where we don't talk about IRA and Loyalist paramilitary crimes anymore, still less prosecute them, but we keep doing so for British soldiers 50 years ago.
Your shame speaks well of you. It is also how one SHOULD feel when your country does wrong.
With the Union in 1800, the British parliament and government assumed responsibility.
If you drop it, break it, fold, spindle or mutilate it, it's YOURS.
In USA my personal position has always been, prosecuting ONLY the small fry like Lt Calley was wrong, the blame was NOT his and his troops alone.
Same is true of crimes committed by British soldiers.
Governments MUST be held - and hold themselves - to higher standards IF their claim to legitimacy is to be worth a damn.
May take a while - and fifty years is but a blink in the eye of God.
Truth AND reconciliation. Not perfect, but nothing on this earth ever is.
There is a good double standard and a bad one. The good double standard is that just because our enemies commit crimes, that does not entitle us to do so.
The bad double standard is just to focus on crimes committed by our side, while ignoring, exonerating, or excusing the crimes committed by our enemies.
Should not ignore the crimes of the other side. But personally want to hold MY side to a (slightly) higher standard. From self respect AND as insurance for the future.
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
If people are losing votes this is obviously a concern in itself - but the checking and verification arrangements are nowadays sufficiently tight that no-one else would be able to get a fraudulent vote past the first stage of the verification process. Maybe there should be more publicity about the existing checks that are made on postal votes, since these are unlikely to be widely understood (even here, as we saw yesterday)
The whole voter registration system needs to be looked at. My daughter lives in Bournemouth and is registered to vote there. As an oversight I have not removed from the voters roll at my house. Therefore she could have voted twice in the UK elections last Thursday. The system for voter registration needs to be upgraded, using the tax and benefits system to ensure that someone can only be registered to vote at one address and that they actually exist.
I could record Donald Trump as living at my address and he would get a polling card no problem.
It is perfectly legal to be on the register in two places, provided you do not vote twice in the same election. Foxjr 2 is on the register here and in London. It is even legal to vote in both places, in local elections.
@SeaShantyIrish2 we hardly use “signatures” for anything in the UK anymore. I sign for things so irregularly that my signature never bears any resemblance to itself. It’s not a form of ID at all.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Oh, the squealing when you say that - from people who must assume part of their vote is based on fraud, to be so worried....
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
If people are losing votes this is obviously a concern in itself - but the checking and verification arrangements are nowadays sufficiently tight that no-one else would be able to get a fraudulent vote past the first stage of the verification process. Maybe there should be more publicity about the existing checks that are made on postal votes, since these are unlikely to be widely understood (even here, as we saw yesterday)
The whole voter registration system needs to be looked at. My daughter lives in Bournemouth and is registered to vote there. As an oversight I have not removed from the voters roll at my house. Therefore she could have voted twice in the UK elections last Thursday. The system for voter registration needs to be upgraded, using the tax and benefits system to ensure that someone can only be registered to vote at one address and that they actually exist.
I could record Donald Trump as living at my address and he would get a polling card no problem.
It is perfectly legal to be on the register in two places, provided you do not vote twice in the same election. Foxjr 2 is on the register here and in London. It is even legal to vote in both places, in local elections.
Oh didn't know that - my parents only voted up north as the monkey with a blue rosette wins in their part of Amersham (unless you are a multimillionaire fraudster / murderer or 60+ you can't afford to live there)
@SeaShantyIrish2 we hardly use “signatures” for anything in the UK anymore. I sign for things so irregularly that my signature never bears any resemblance to itself. It’s not a form of ID at all.
Can anyone actually write clearly with the little "pens" the delivery firms get your electronic signature with? Taking a photo of the item delivered is far better.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Oh, the squealing when you say that - from people who must assume part of their vote is based on fraud, to be so worried....
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Voter ID is ID cards by the back door.
I have proposed two cheap, essentially 100% effective, methods of eliminating personation, that don't suppress voter turnout, and don't effectively introduce ID cards.
How is compulsory photo ID superior to either of my suggestions?
Compulsory ID is far superior in achieving the governments objectives as it will:
1 Ensure Labour & Lib Dems (and whats left of the liberal Tories in parliament) get shouty about protecting rights for the underclass rather than focus on jobs and health for the masses. 2 Help the government party get a higher proportion of votes in future elections through disenfranchisement.
Your solution does neither I'm afraid, back to the drawing board.
And Compulsory ID I would, nowadays, back provided it didn't also include a global database that everyone was granted full access to.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Oh, the squealing when you say that - from people who must assume part of their vote is based on fraud, to be so worried....
You’d have a point if Boris and co had raised concerns about the legitimacy of the results in 2019, 2017 and 2016.
Voter ID at polling stations is using a wrecking ball to crack a nut. I doubt any seat since the war has been decided by the rare odd illegal vote due to somebody voting in person and pretending to be somebody else. Fermanangh and South Tyrone possibly?? (at the height of the Troubles) . Postal voting has far more capacity for fraud/coercion but I think it is acknowledged that it does more good than harm so canto see why the Tories are pushing this stupid policy
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
If people are losing votes this is obviously a concern in itself - but the checking and verification arrangements are nowadays sufficiently tight that no-one else would be able to get a fraudulent vote past the first stage of the verification process. Maybe there should be more publicity about the existing checks that are made on postal votes, since these are unlikely to be widely understood (even here, as we saw yesterday)
The whole voter registration system needs to be looked at. My daughter lives in Bournemouth and is registered to vote there. As an oversight I have not removed from the voters roll at my house. Therefore she could have voted twice in the UK elections last Thursday. The system for voter registration needs to be upgraded, using the tax and benefits system to ensure that someone can only be registered to vote at one address and that they actually exist.
I could record Donald Trump as living at my address and he would get a polling card no problem.
It is perfectly legal to be on the register in two places, provided you do not vote twice in the same election. Foxjr 2 is on the register here and in London. It is even legal to vote in both places, in local elections.
Oh didn't know that - my parents only voted up north as the monkey with a blue rosette wins in their part of Amersham (unless you are a multimillionaire fraudster / murderer or 60+ you can't afford to live there)
Mostly it is students and second home owners that are registered twice.
It does explain in part the low perceived turnout in 18-24s, as there can never be a greater turnout than 50% of the double registered.
Digging out your passport to vote is a pain in the arse. You can’t pop in to vote any more.
The government should be looking to increase turnout. Nearly 60% of people didn’t bother in Hartlepool. You don’t have to think too hard about why the government doesn’t do anything about that.
Those people didn’t vote because they didn’t believe in the integrity of the system mate. Photo ID is going to solve that. Rejoice.
Why these people didn't vote is an interesting question. Presumably there will be a number of reasons but it is pretty obvious that none of our political parties spoke for them or to them despite all the leafleting and efforts focused in a bye election with both the PM and the LOTO there regularly.
In Scotland I do not think that there is any doubt that the increased turnout was driven by anxiety about Indyref2 on both sides so people cared more. It is troubling that so many really didn't care what either Boris or SKS was offering in Hartlepool.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Oh, the squealing when you say that - from people who must assume part of their vote is based on fraud, to be so worried....
So juvenile. You can do better than this.
Juvenile? The desire to make the result reflect the true will of the electorate, not debased by fraud? Riiiiiight.......
Absolutely fantastic figures for our balance of trade.
£7.6 billion improvement in our balance of trade. Plus of course £3 billion in net contributions to the EU we're no longer making. Means that we're £10.6 billion better off.
I'm sure you're going to be cheering that to the rafters. Right? Right?
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Oh, the squealing when you say that - from people who must assume part of their vote is based on fraud, to be so worried....
I think it quite possible that the impact will mostly be on elderly people who vote in person rather than with postal votes.
It is quite possible that the Tory party has not kept up with the changes in its demographic, and shot itself in the foot.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Oh, the squealing when you say that - from people who must assume part of their vote is based on fraud, to be so worried....
So juvenile. You can do better than this.
Juvenile? The desire to make the result reflect the true will of the electorate, not debased by fraud? Riiiiiight.......
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
If people are losing votes this is obviously a concern in itself - but the checking and verification arrangements are nowadays sufficiently tight that no-one else would be able to get a fraudulent vote past the first stage of the verification process. Maybe there should be more publicity about the existing checks that are made on postal votes, since these are unlikely to be widely understood (even here, as we saw yesterday)
The whole voter registration system needs to be looked at. My daughter lives in Bournemouth and is registered to vote there. As an oversight I have not removed from the voters roll at my house. Therefore she could have voted twice in the UK elections last Thursday. The system for voter registration needs to be upgraded, using the tax and benefits system to ensure that someone can only be registered to vote at one address and that they actually exist.
I could record Donald Trump as living at my address and he would get a polling card no problem.
You raise a good point. In WA State the Secretary of State works with county auditors to seek out and research duplicate registrations, and also with other states.
Most of these dups end up being "deadwood" at election time; ballots get mailed out but not returned, because the person has died or moved. And if this happens over several election cycles, they get moved to inactive status (are NOT mailed a ballot automatically) and eventually are purged from the rolls entirely.
HOWEVER, beware of false positives obtained by data matching Which was one problem uncovered during Florida 2000, and has cropped up in other jurisdictions. Can and HAS disenfranchised eligible voters. Often with significant disadvantage to some demographics and parties - and consequent advantage to others.
There is something about the left that think so badly about their fellow humans.
Voting ID is about demonstrating the importance of the vote and signalling to everyone that it is secure.
But you assume it is for partisan reasons with no evidence - just your own belief that Tories are evil.
Lol. Blatant hypocrisy and partisanship.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
The change is about signalling that voting is secure
Oh, the squealing when you say that - from people who must assume part of their vote is based on fraud, to be so worried....
So juvenile. You can do better than this.
Juvenile? The desire to make the result reflect the true will of the electorate, not debased by fraud? Riiiiiight.......
You’re still being juvenile. We know that the result already reflects the true will of the electorate and isn’t debased by fraud but of course you have to come here with arrogant triumphalism to blindly defend the government without engaging in any of the actual arguments.
The question is: is there enough fraud or perceived fraud to justify putting obstacles in the way of voting? No matter your opinion, it is still an obstacle that doesn’t currently exist.
You may believe that obstacle is worth it. Fine. But that’s an actual argument rather than simply screaming “THE LEFT SUPPORTS FRAUD” like a child.
One of the reasons why people - even those experienced in elections - sometimes don't appreciate the checks that are done on postal votes (other than that even few agents and candidates bother going along to observe these counts, as that's generally a waste of time as well as taking up key time in the days before polling day) is that to get the data for the numbers of votes that are rejected, you generally have to dig for it.
This is because the official return from the count is precisely that - a statement of the outcome for those votes that arrived at the count. Postal votes that fail verification before the count (which will be the large majority of those so rejected) don't reach the count, and hence don't show in the official return.
The level of postal votes failing verification varies by election and local authority within a 1-10% range, with typical rates being 3-4%. Academic analysis of the geographical variation of such rejections hasn't found any strong pattern - there is a slight correlation with areas of lower average educational attainment - but academic study of the patterns suggest the principal reason is different standards for signature matches being applied by different EROs.
The EC sets out a procedure for reporting cases where fraud is suspected, including protocols for preserving potential forensic evidence, but the subjective conclusion is that most of the rejections arise from voter mistakes. We had one anecdote from a PB'er yesterday who recalls getting his birth date wrong on a form. I had another in this election, when the lady across the road got her ballot papers and wanted to vote for me, but (during a chat about the whole process) couldn't remember which signature she'd used for the application. When I seemed surprised she explained that she generally used a long full-name signature but sometimes an abbreviated one, and when I asked how she decided which to use, she said it depended upon whether the box on the form was big enough to put down her full-name signature! Her vote could easily have been rejected if she used differing signatures, particularly as for most counts the signature matching is now done automatically rather than visually (although those rejected should also be examined visually)
That may be true but when I first moved to the UK in 1998, I helped in the 2001 General Elections. I was astonished how easy it was to commit voter fraud with postal voting on demand. Coming from South Africa, I couldn't believe that the system was naively based on trust. There have been several questionable election results such as the Forest Ward by-election in Leytonstone in 2003 where I helped. I knew Labour would lose it but not by over 600 votes. My estimate was around 200 votes based on canvassing returns and I'm usually very accurate.
What was the system you observed in South Africa? How did it work, and how well? And what parts of it would you personally recommend (or not) for UK?
I now live in the UAE but nothing has changed from the time I first helped in elections there in 1994 and 1996. You have to be registered and hold a photo ID document. They also have invisible ink painted on their fingers, which shows up under UV scanners to ensure that they have voted. No other form of ID is allowed such as a passport. The UK is just proposing any form of photo ID, which I think is more than fair. It is then much easier to track voter fraud and all people - even in a poor society like South Africa - accept photo ID to preserve the integrity of the vote. It hasn't suppressed the votes of any party. Parties will just have to ensure that people are educated and get voter ID.
Voter ID is ID cards by the back door.
I have proposed two cheap, essentially 100% effective, methods of eliminating personation, that don't suppress voter turnout, and don't effectively introduce ID cards.
How is compulsory photo ID superior to either of my suggestions?
Simplicity. Just have passports, driving license or if you don’t have either of those a government approved voter ID card that can be issued by banks or post offices.
Don’t link it to anything, don’t over engineer it, just have a simple proof of identity.
Add a date of birth and you can use it to stop your kids going into pubs as well…
Mcvities to close their Scottish plant in Glasgow due to excess capacity and concentrate on their RUK plants
This sounds ever so familiar when we were warned the same would happen on Brexit as Companies relocate to the EU
This does raise the serious question of just how much economic damage will Sturgeon's quest for Independence do to future inward investment to Scotland whilst nobody knows it's future status, whilst the RUK does not have that as a problem
1. You can't compare 1q to 4q 2. There's a pandemic 3. There was stockpiling, and then the unwinding of sociology
We will only know the true impact in six to nine months time. It may be that Brexit has been a disaster. It may be that it has no measurable impact. It may be that it was positive.
But we cannot know that right now.
Sorry, I replied before I had seen your reply. I suspect the fact that we are now no longer in the Customs Union and the SM with some friction at the border will reduce the Rotterdam effect somewhat with a consequential improvement in our balance of trade with the EU and a deterioration of our position with the RotW. It will be interesting to see how big this is.
I also think on reflection that even in 6 months time our economy is going to be highly distorted by bounce back and growing at a truly exceptional rate (7% according to the Bank) sucking imports in. It may be very difficult to identify the new normal for quite some time.
The fraud isn’t happening in person too much I suspect, it’s happening with postal votes. Most people who have spent time overseas have a tale to tell about “lost” postal ballots. I voted in 2016 but that was the only time in the 2010s because every other time without fail, the postal ballots inexplicably got “lost”. And the electoral commission doesn’t care.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
If people are losing votes this is obviously a concern in itself - but the checking and verification arrangements are nowadays sufficiently tight that no-one else would be able to get a fraudulent vote past the first stage of the verification process. Maybe there should be more publicity about the existing checks that are made on postal votes, since these are unlikely to be widely understood (even here, as we saw yesterday)
The whole voter registration system needs to be looked at. My daughter lives in Bournemouth and is registered to vote there. As an oversight I have not removed from the voters roll at my house. Therefore she could have voted twice in the UK elections last Thursday. The system for voter registration needs to be upgraded, using the tax and benefits system to ensure that someone can only be registered to vote at one address and that they actually exist.
I could record Donald Trump as living at my address and he would get a polling card no problem.
It is perfectly legal to be on the register in two places, provided you do not vote twice in the same election. Foxjr 2 is on the register here and in London. It is even legal to vote in both places, in local elections.
Oh didn't know that - my parents only voted up north as the monkey with a blue rosette wins in their part of Amersham (unless you are a multimillionaire fraudster / murderer or 60+ you can't afford to live there)
Mostly it is students and second home owners that are registered twice.
It does explain in part the low perceived turnout in 18-24s, as there can never be a greater turnout than 50% of the double registered.
Personally think that is a pretty small component to lower turnout by younger voters, though would be very interesting topic for serious, apolitical research.
Mcvities to close their Scottish plant in Glasgow due to excess capacity and concentrate on their RUK plants
This sounds ever so familiar when we were warned the same would happen on Brexit as Companies relocate to the EU
This does raise the serious question of just how much economic damage will Sturgeon's quest for Independence do to future inward investment to Scotland whilst nobody knows it's future status, whilst the RUK does not have that as a problem
Comments
If you truly care about democracy, you would be trying to fix that not make it harder to solve.
Are your suspicions about personation or postal vote fraud?
It is for those who arrive at the polling station without ID to have their photo taken.
There are alternatives that are similarly zero cost. One could reserve those ballots cast by those without ID to the side, and they are only verified and counted in the event that they affect the final result, which would also cut to zero personation.
Both of these solve personation, costs essentially zero, but don't have the side effect of suppressing turnout of certain demographic groups.
That stops voter ID fraud, while not deliberately reducing turnout in some demographic groups.
Let's think about this:
If lots of people don't casually carry photo ID, therefore imposing a "burden" on polling staff, then that's a lot of people who are going to be affected by this law. A group that is predominantly young, poor and urban.
If not a lot of people are effected, then it's not a particular burden.
But let's take a step back.
The average polling station will have around 1,200 voters (https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/word_doc/Polling-district-review-guidance.doc).
Let's be generous and pretend they all vote. Let's also be generous and go with 12 hours (rather than the 16 that most are actually open).
That's one hundred voters an hour for two people at the absolute maximum. And realistically more like 40. Between two polling staff.
Each is processing twenty to fifty people. An hour. At worse that's not quite one a minute, and more like one every three or four.
Let's assume one in ten won't have photo ID.
That's two photos an hour.
I would wish that our conduct in war was perfect, but you know very well that it will never be so. I do know the behaviour of the security forces was infinitely better than that of the organisations they were fighting.
The whole voter id thing is premised on the belief that everyone voting is on the take. The current system is about self-policing and trust. The current system is incredibly British.
Must try harder Charles
I vaguely recall some minor changes on postal voting but I do think it is important that the integrity of our system is protected. OTOH I also agree that voting should be easy and encouraged. The methodology of the Republican party in the US has no place in this country or indeed any country claiming to be a democracy.
Personation seems to me to be an unlikely way of seeking to influence an election result. It requires disproportionate effort and quite a lot of different people unless you are willing to take silly risks. Vote farming in care homes or communities which are not a part of the mainstream, where females in the family are strongly discouraged from speaking to males outside it are obvious examples and more indicative of what the Judge found. I am not sure that this Bill addresses the real issue.
It’s just the fannying about with people having to go home and get ID (which they wont, they’ll give up) or provisional ballots that have to be verified to solve a problem that barely exists is just ridiculous.
I’d be interested to see how it works in university seats like Canterbury too, where most students forget the election is even happening and their post is delivered on campus to insecure cubby holes.
Shouting about "voter suppression" is as nonsense here as it is in the USA. It's just a stupid, wasteful petty bureaucratic and meddlesome response to a very small problem.
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2021/05/11/yang-reaps-liberal-backlash-conservative-support-from-israel-tweet-1381442
NEW YORK — Andrew Yang’s pro-Israel tweet Monday night won him the support of Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Ted Cruz, and the scorn of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — typically not a great turn for a would-be Democratic candidate for mayor.
But Yang’s pro-Israel stance is well within the mainstream of New York Democratic politics in a city that is home to more Jews than almost any other in the world. Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo are both ardent supporters of Israel.
And Yang — who was already being targeted by left-leaning groups for his more moderate political stances — was not the only Democratic mayoral candidate to speak in support of Israel amid attacks in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem and air strikes in Gaza in recent days.
But as the current frontrunner, who has made a strong pitch for Jewish support in his mayoral campaign, Yang has drawn the most outcry over his stance — especially as it comes amid Eid al-Fitr, one of the most important Muslim religious holidays, marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
“I'm standing with the people of Israel who are coming under bombardment attacks, and condemn the Hamas terrorists,” Yang tweeted on Monday night. “The people of NYC will always stand with our brothers and sisters in Israel who face down terrorism and persevere.”
Jewish leaders voiced their support on Twitter, as did prominent Republicans like Cruz, Donald Trump Jr., former Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Meghan McCain.
“I certainly would never ask for or want their support," Yang said when asked Tuesday to respond to the tweets during a campaign stop.
But others excoriated the candidate for not mentioning Palestine or acknowledging Palestinian victims. Yang was scheduled to join the Astoria Welfare Society to distribute groceries in the heavily Muslim area ahead of Eid, but told reporters he was asked to stay away following backlash over the tweet.
“The organizers of the event decided it would be better if we did not attend and we were happy to abide by that choice,” he said when asked by NY1 why the Tuesday event was removed from his schedule. . . .
Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — who represents parts of western Queens and has so far avoided getting involved in the mayor’s race — tweeted Tuesday that Yang’s appearance in the neighborhood was unwelcome. . . .
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Ray McGuire, both fellow Democratic mayoral candidates, made similar statements in support of Israel, but they did not draw the level of national attention Yang did. . . .
Former nonprofit CEO Dianne Morales, who is running for mayor as an unapologetic leftist, was the sole candidate to mention Palestine. . . .
Like others have said, the weakness of the system is postal voting and this proposed bill does nothing to preserve the integrity of that. I wonder why?
I have proposed two cheap, essentially 100% effective, methods of eliminating personation, that don't suppress voter turnout, and don't effectively introduce ID cards.
How is compulsory photo ID superior to either of my suggestions?
Especially when you consider the large number of Jewish voters in the likely electorate. PLUS fact that the Scott Stringer, who has been in 3rd place for much of the race and who is Jewish, has been accused of sexual harassment and is both highly unlikely to win the Democratic nomination.
While many Jewish voters are in fact progressives who are either ant- or non-Zionist and/or troubled by the Palestinian Question, more are pro-Israel to some degree from mildly to very strongly.
Yang and Adams are making a play for the latter in general, and for Jewish voters who were planning to back Stringer but are now having 2nd thoughts. Also, under the new Ranked Choice voting system, the second preferences of folks who DO give Stringer their #1 could REALLY help either Yang or Adams end up on top when all is said and done.
And of the two, my guess is that Yang is most likely to benefit from his pro-Israeli position. But this is NOT carved in stone, by any means.
I would wish that our conduct in war was perfect, but you know very well that it will never be so. I do know the behaviour of the security forces was infinitely better than that of the organisations they were fighting.
If one wants to be critical, it's that the behavior of the Protestant paramilitaries was no better than the Republicans, yet they were in many cases protected by the security forces.
Some informants were protected, even as they committed crimes (the same was true of some informants within Republican organisations). But, I think the use of informants did more to harm than help Loyalist terrorist organisations. Thousands ended up in jail after all. In fact, the authorities were generally more successful at getting arrests and convictions for crimes committed by loyalists than for those committed by republicans.
However, there do seem to be double standards where we don't talk about IRA and Loyalist paramilitary crimes anymore, still less prosecute them, but we keep doing so for British soldiers 50 years ago.
In particular the first free, fair AND universal suffrage election in the history of South Africa. Which for all its flaws was and remains an inspiration to the world.
Many of us would have liked to have been their. But you were actually there, at the cusp of history. I envy you!
So what is your opinion of the Ballymurphy inquest and its findings? And the cover up by our military?
1. To make sure that fraud can't affect election results
2. To make it a higher risk proposition to commit electoral fraud
Each ballot, as I'm sure you know, is numbered. It's perfectly possible to find out who voted a certain way by tallying the ballot number with the number recorded next to the voters name. In the event that the number of "no ID" votes were enough to swing the outcome one could then go through the individual ballots confirming each one manually by turning up at the address of every voter to confirm they match the photo.
You would also want to do a sweep of (say) one in ten voters. This would enable you to see if personation was common and to find specific instances. If you wanted to up the security, you could record fingerprints at the polling station too.
As a result of the GFA, we have to accept that a lot of wrongdoers got away with it. Some of them are now in government.
I guess it is open to us, the British, to be critical about our own side as a learning exercise though.
UK exports to the EU down 18.1%
Imports from EU down 21.7% versus Q4 2020
Non EU exports up 0.4%, imports down 0.9% in same time period ... https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1392366872742580229/photo/1
He was patrolling the heavily republican area of Londonderry with his section when he became separated and got lost, wandering the streets on his own. Eventually a crowd emerged that surrounded him and starting hurling abuse at him and throwing objects.
He sat down and started crying for his mum - absolutely terrified. A few of the women had sympathy and started debating whether or not to escort him back to the army base.
It was too late. Another woman had telephoned the IRA and a paramilitary arrived within minutes with a pistol, parted the crowd, made his way up to then lad and executed him on the spot.
That's the IRA.
2. There's a pandemic
3. There was stockpiling, and then the unwinding of sociology
We will only know the true impact in six to nine months time. It may be that Brexit has been a disaster. It may be that it has no measurable impact. It may be that it was positive.
But we cannot know that right now.
With the Union in 1800, the British parliament and government assumed responsibility.
If you drop it, break it, fold, spindle or mutilate it, it's YOURS.
In USA my personal position has always been, prosecuting ONLY the small fry like Lt Calley was wrong, the blame was NOT his and his troops alone.
Same is true of crimes committed by British soldiers.
Governments MUST be held - and hold themselves - to higher standards IF their claim to legitimacy is to be worth a damn.
May take a while - and fifty years is but a blink in the eye of God.
Truth AND reconciliation. Not perfect, but nothing on this earth ever is.
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/05/11/voter-fraud-fallacy-real-dangers-to-british-democracy/
The thing is that the wrong question is being asked.
The current system works. You turn up and vote. If someone else has voted as you, you’ll know about it immediately. There is not a problem here that needs to be fixed therefore there must be a ulterior motive.
So I would have no problem going back to the (pre-Blair?) restrictions on who can get postal votes. Even though I’ve used one for as long as I can remember and it makes life far simpler for me personally
It was a great atmosphere, with everyone seeming relieved that the new democratic dawn had happened without too much trouble. A unique moment in history.
I remember thinking at the time that who could have thought 10 years previously that the Communist Party would be in government in South Africa, and illegal in Russia.
I could record Donald Trump as living at my address and he would get a polling card no problem.
Our demand was also significantly reduced by the new lockdown in January and GDP fell across the quarter. It is really much too early to tell if there has been any rebalancing of our trade with the EU. There unquestionably needs to be. I think it will be at least another 6 months before any trend is clear.
The bad double standard is just to focus on crimes committed by our side, while ignoring, exonerating, or excusing the crimes committed by our enemies.
The government should be looking to increase turnout. Nearly 60% of people didn’t bother in Hartlepool. You don’t have to think too hard about why the government doesn’t do anything about that.
1 Ensure Labour & Lib Dems (and whats left of the liberal Tories in parliament) get shouty about protecting rights for the underclass rather than focus on jobs and health for the masses.
2 Help the government party get a higher proportion of votes in future elections through disenfranchisement.
Your solution does neither I'm afraid, back to the drawing board.
But you are NOT required to submit ID when you vote via postal ballot (returned either by mail, in person OR drop box) which covers the vast majority of ballots cast. OR when you show up at a voting center and are already registered.
In all cases you are required to provide a valid signature, that is you return ballot sig is checked against one on file, from when you registered OR updated you signature, because maybe you handwriting has deteriorated or changed due to age or infirmity.
Bottom line is, you do NOT need to present voter ID in order to cast your vote PROVIDED it's been checked already. With the sig check - of EVERY voted ballot - giving a high level of added security.
In WA the biggest problem - itself very small - has NOT been fraud in voting, but rather fraud with signatures submitted to qualify initiative and referendum measures for the ballot.
Several cases where signature checks revealed phony sigs. Interestingly, upon investigation the culprits turned out NOT to be the actual sponsors of proposed ballot measures, but people they hired to collect signatures for them. Or rather, the people the people they hired hired! Who were trying to make a few more bucks for no work.
International observers have commented on the trust-based nature of British general elections
and recommended that asking for voter ID could improve the integrity of polls.
So all the Government is doing is following the recommendation of observers.
Yes we all know it's completely insane and doesn't resolve any of the real issues that has been identified but it does seem to be - we need to tick this box, job done.
1. He knows it is bollocks and is cynically posting an alternative view.
2. He really is that gullible
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity...
They didn’t.
Postal voting has far more capacity for fraud/coercion but I think it is acknowledged that it does more good than harm so canto see why the Tories are pushing this stupid policy
It does explain in part the low perceived turnout in 18-24s, as there can never be a greater turnout than 50% of the double registered.
In Scotland I do not think that there is any doubt that the increased turnout was driven by anxiety about Indyref2 on both sides so people cared more. It is troubling that so many really didn't care what either Boris or SKS was offering in Hartlepool.
£7.6 billion improvement in our balance of trade. Plus of course £3 billion in net contributions to the EU we're no longer making. Means that we're £10.6 billion better off.
I'm sure you're going to be cheering that to the rafters. Right? Right?
It is quite possible that the Tory party has not kept up with the changes in its demographic, and shot itself in the foot.
I do hope so.
Well, you might be half right...
Most of these dups end up being "deadwood" at election time; ballots get mailed out but not returned, because the person has died or moved. And if this happens over several election cycles, they get moved to inactive status (are NOT mailed a ballot automatically) and eventually are purged from the rolls entirely.
HOWEVER, beware of false positives obtained by data matching Which was one problem uncovered during Florida 2000, and has cropped up in other jurisdictions. Can and HAS disenfranchised eligible voters. Often with significant disadvantage to some demographics and parties - and consequent advantage to others.
The question is: is there enough fraud or perceived fraud to justify putting obstacles in the way of voting? No matter your opinion, it is still an obstacle that doesn’t currently exist.
You may believe that obstacle is worth it. Fine. But that’s an actual argument rather than simply screaming “THE LEFT SUPPORTS FRAUD” like a child.
This is because the official return from the count is precisely that - a statement of the outcome for those votes that arrived at the count. Postal votes that fail verification before the count (which will be the large majority of those so rejected) don't reach the count, and hence don't show in the official return.
The level of postal votes failing verification varies by election and local authority within a 1-10% range, with typical rates being 3-4%. Academic analysis of the geographical variation of such rejections hasn't found any strong pattern - there is a slight correlation with areas of lower average educational attainment - but academic study of the patterns suggest the principal reason is different standards for signature matches being applied by different EROs.
The EC sets out a procedure for reporting cases where fraud is suspected, including protocols for preserving potential forensic evidence, but the subjective conclusion is that most of the rejections arise from voter mistakes. We had one anecdote from a PB'er yesterday who recalls getting his birth date wrong on a form. I had another in this election, when the lady across the road got her ballot papers and wanted to vote for me, but (during a chat about the whole process) couldn't remember which signature she'd used for the application. When I seemed surprised she explained that she generally used a long full-name signature but sometimes an abbreviated one, and when I asked how she decided which to use, she said it depended upon whether the box on the form was big enough to put down her full-name signature! Her vote could easily have been rejected if she used differing signatures, particularly as for most counts the signature matching is now done automatically rather than visually (although those rejected should also be examined visually)
Don’t link it to anything, don’t over engineer it, just have a simple proof of identity.
Add a date of birth and you can use it to stop your kids going into pubs as well…
This sounds ever so familiar when we were warned the same would happen on Brexit as Companies relocate to the EU
This does raise the serious question of just how much economic damage will Sturgeon's quest for Independence do to future inward investment to Scotland whilst nobody knows it's future status, whilst the RUK does not have that as a problem
BBC News - Glasgow biscuit factory closure plan puts nearly 500 jobs at risk
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-57077865
I also think on reflection that even in 6 months time our economy is going to be highly distorted by bounce back and growing at a truly exceptional rate (7% according to the Bank) sucking imports in. It may be very difficult to identify the new normal for quite some time.