So, in the last election there were only 6 cases of electoral #fraud (#MattHancock has reluctantly admitted). This from a #voting population of over 45M
You'll be aware of the number of cases of fraud by #Tory MPs (from a population of 355) exceeds this in nominal terms & is vastly larger in proportional terms.
So, let be clear, #voterID is about voter suppression not fraud.
If the #Tories were interested in #democratic fraud they'd put their own house in order.
h/t Roland Hoskins/Bird site
However, part of the United Kingdom already has #voterID laws, which I don't hear much mention about or outcry over.
#NI in 2002 had The Electoral Fraud (Northern Ireland) Act
introduced which amended the Representation of the People Act 1983 which required all #NI voters to have photographic identification at polling stations.
So if it acceptable for us in #NI to have to produce ID, why isn't acceptable to the rest of the UK?
That is the problem right there. When it happens in England, there is uproar but when it's the other three nations - no-one is interested.
Maybe if those shouting about this, paid some attention how it is working in NI, then there could be a more reasoned debate.
So, if we are UK - then we all have the same voting laws or we don't. So bring the rest of the UK into line with #NI or remove the requirement from #NI
@jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
The myth-or-legend was that quite a lot of dead people used to vote in NI. This didn't happen in GB. It's not unreasonable to match the response to the observed threat.
@TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
There definitely was evidence of voter fraud in 1980's in NI. Many believed that Sinn Fein vote was affected more by that. However in 1983 for example 149 people arrested at polling stations, 104 were convicted.
Firstly think of the situation in NI at the time - why do think they may have wanted to discredit the British voting system - political statement? Also, was 104 convictions really that big of an opposed threat that required voter ID laws?
@TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
However when ID laws were introduced it reduced the number of incidents. Plus it helped improve the confidence of the voting public in the electoral system. So it worked.
#NI proved the system works.
So why wouldn't you want to increase the confidence of the GB voting public in elections.
Plus the real problem in GB is FPTP - which #NI doesn't use for Assembly or Local Elections either.
@jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6 There's no lack of confidence with in-person voting in GB. The fraud (both risk and actual) is in postal voting, which unlike in-person voting is wide open to all sorts of attacks (which I won't detail in case anyone reading this hasn't yet thought of them all).
If the Tories had actually wanted to improve the integrity of elections they'd have done something like removing postal votes on demand, not attacking in-person voting where there isn't a problem.
But hey ... guess what ... the Tories get lots of postal votes, so they wouldn't do anything to make postal voting less convenient.
@TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
When applying of a postal vote in GB, do you not need a witness declaration to confirm why you are applying for one?
@jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6 Nope. You can just say "I feel like having a postal vote for all elections from now on please". No justification, no witness, no nothing - completely on demand. (Unless you're wanting the ballot sent to somewhere other than your registered address, then you have to give a reason.)
Some of the ways in which this can be abused are obvious; some may be less so but, like I said, I'm not going to advertise them!
@TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
Sounds like the voting system in #GB needs a few safeguards introduced.
In #NI your application form needs to be attested. Then it is returned to the Electoral Office who decided if your reason is valid and your application will be accepted.
@TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
The only purpose of an election is to convince the LOSERS that they don't have the support of the majority.
Thus it is not enough that a voting system be secure: it must be OBVIOUSLY secure, so that not even the losers can claim that the election was stolen.
Electronic voting, mail voting, advance voting, voting from home are all "enhancements" with negligible or negative advantages that inevitably allow claims of fraud. They should be eliminated
@JorgeStolfi @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
NI doesn't have electronic voting - paper & pencil in a booth!
After the nonsense in America, don't think I would want it here.
My only concern with your idea, how does people with mobility issues or cannot leave the house - exercise their democratic vote? They shouldn't be disenfranchised.
@jacqui76 @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
I think it would be feasible be to send a three-person "mobile voting station" to their homes, on voting day, carrying a suitable ballot box.
I suppose it would have to be requested in advance. I guess that it would be enough to have one team for every (say) 10 fixed voting stations.
I am sure that it would cost much less than an electronic voting machine, and maybe even less than postal voting.
@jacqui76 @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
PS: NI is Northern Ireland not Nicaragua, right?
@JorgeStolfi @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
Yes NI is Northern Ireland.
I think your idea of mobile voting stations in Northern Ireland would not work.
People could easily be intimidated by election representatives standing outside, people working on then also could be intimidated. Also, certain areas could tell them to stay away to suppress the vote.
So I personally don't see that idea working in #NI.
@jacqui76 @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
What if the staff are selected from the local population by random draft, like for jury duty?
If a home-bound voter requested the service, why would he not accept the staffers carrying the ballot box?
@JorgeStolfi @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
The Electoral Office in NI, advertise already for Temporary Polling Staff to help deliver the elections already on top of the staff that work for the EO.
I can't see that working here. Political canvassers are already been intimated for delivering leaflets and putting up election posters in areas that some locals consider 'not' their area.
@JorgeStolfi @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
Actual Election Officials would be considered a high risk of intimidation, especially if they were carrying a ballot box. This could quite easily be stolen.
Considering Joanne Mathers, a woman carrying out the census in Derry, in 1981 was shot & killed for helping people fill the forms in. So as a post conflict society as NI is, postal voting is safer for all concerned.
@JorgeStolfi @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6 *Some* means must be found for people who can't get themselves to the polling station to vote.
One way I've seen this done (in Kosovo) is that in the days before the election, polling staff take essentially a mobile polling station to the disabled person's house (paperwork and ballot box). I imagine this is mind-blowingly expensive.
@TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
Why would it be expensive?
The people would be drawn from the same pool of staffers at fixed voting stations; so it would be unpaid civic duty, like jury duty. The van could be rented for the day.
Mail voting also has its costs: not just sending out the ballots and processing them, but also (mostly, I guess) ensuring the security of the process at all stages. And there is a diffuse cost at the post offices.
@JorgeStolfi @TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
As someone who lives abroad and would be disfranchised by the removal of my postal vote, and given the 15 Year limit on voting from abroad has finally been lifted, how would you propose to protect my right to vote?
@margarance @JorgeStolfi @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
I agree totally with you. I don't see why we should lose our right to a postal vote in the UK.
I think postal voting in America had been demonised by the orange man baby because he lost. He used it as an excuse to try and over throw an election he lost.
So judging our system through that lens isn't helpful.
@jacqui76 @margarance @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
But that is the point. Trump could do that because it was nearly impossible for the election officials to convince his voters that there had been no fraud in the mail vote.
Same for electronic voting. Even when there are paper ballots that can be counted, it still gives space for months of "it was stolen!" claims...
@JorgeStolfi @jacqui76 @margarance @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6 I think that history shows us that ballot boxes can be stuffed if the people in power have a mind to do so.
The Conservative Party in the UK have manufactured an issue, just as Trump did over the water, in an attempt to benefit themselves. It's not the first time that "problems" have been manufactured to justify a govt's "solution" (nor was Trump's), and it won't be the last
@RoyMotteram @jacqui76 @margarance @TimWardCam @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
AFAIK in France votes are collected with pencil on paper slips, in a simple ballot box, and counted on the same room at the end of the day, by the same people who manned the receiving table, with public watching.
I can't imagine how "ballot box stuffing" could work in that system, at least not in a significant scale.
And I cannot imagine how the loser could get his base to think that the election was stolen.
@TimWardCam @RoyMotteram @jacqui76 @margarance @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
Yes, that goes without saying. And the voting station staff must sign an official report with their counts, with copies available to the public.
Here in Brazil the voting machines print reports available to the public, and the separate counts for the ~500'000 voting stations are available online at the central server. So fraud in the totalization is not a problem. But the machines are 100% electronic with no paper trail...
@margarance @TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
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Vote by mail for citizens abroad may be acceptable since it is usually a small number of votes and it does not seem as easy to mess with it as with mail vote for anyone who asks.
IIRC the US considered allowing internet voting for soldiers abroad, but in the end concluded that but was too unsafe and opted for mail.
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@margarance @TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas
@ChrisMayLA6
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When I was living in the US, I could vote in the nearest Brazilian Consulate. It was inconvenient, but seemed a reasonable compromise. Even today people here have to register to vote in a specific station, and if they are traveling on the day they fill a form at any station, which will waive the fine but does not let them vote. (Yes, there is no excuse for this constraint in the age of the internet.)
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@margarance @TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas
@ChrisMayLA6
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However, it is not reasonable to require that voting be made possible to *everybody*. Absentees will exist even in countries where voting is mandatory (like here).
What matters is that the lost votes are not intentionally biased against any candidate or party. Which seems a common situation in the US, because of sparsely and "strategically" located voting stations. A situation which the GOP is by all means trying to make worse.
@JorgeStolfi @margarance @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6 In my experience political parties in the UK have little to no influence over where polling stations are (this may vary across the country, I wouldn't know).
Running elections is the one council function where the officers are not told what to do by councillors. They will listen, and if all councillors from all parties say, using their local knowledge, "location A is a crap place for a polling station, location B is better" then the officers might well decide on B rather than A, but there is no mechanism whereby just one party can achieve their own preferred locations.
@TimWardCam @JorgeStolfi @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
But what facts? Where is the evidence that postal voting by Brits abroad is used fraudulently? Because that would be the only convincing argument for stripping us of our right to vote (which a ban on postal votes would do). Perception and suspicion should not be grounds for disenfranchising anyone.
@margarance @TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
The problem is not that fraud occurs, but that CLAIMS of fraud by the losers cannot be dismissed easily, or at all. See all the drama that Trump created in the US: more than 50 lawsuits, several expensive audits and recounts, accusations and death threats to election voters, incessant lying by Fox News and other right-wing sources and candidates, and much more -- ending in the Jan/6 riot. All because of mail and electronic voting. >>
@margarance @TimWardCam @jacqui76 @Loukas
@ChrisMayLA6
>> And all that mess was copied by Bolsonaro here in Brazil, including the attempted coup...
@Loukas @margarance @TimWardCam @jacqui76 @ChrisMayLA6
We can't stop liars from lying, but we could make it impossible for them to claim that an elecrion was stolen through fraud.
I am convinced that all the "stolen election" drama in the US (and in Brazil), including the coup attempts, would not have happened without mail voting and electronic voting.
@JorgeStolfi @Loukas @margarance @TimWardCam @ChrisMayLA6
The problem with mail in voting and electronic voting in America from what I can see - came after the vote had happened.
That is when the orange man baby started screaming about the election being stolen. So is the real problem is he lost the election, can't accept it, so he attacked the process.
Look at the lawsuits that Fox is facing because they peddled the lie. If he had won, would this had happened?
@jacqui76 @Loukas @margarance @TimWardCam @ChrisMayLA6
Of course not. As I wrote in the lead post, the purpose of an election is to convince the LOSERS that they don't have the majority of the vote.
The winners don't need to be convinced. If there was no election and their victory was declared instead by the court astrologer or by ChatGPT, they would totally believe it.
@TimWardCam @JorgeStolfi @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
The arrangements for elections in Northern Ireland are different from the rest of UK. It is administered centrally by the Chief Electoral
Officer (CEO) who is a statutory office holder independent of Government. He is
assisted by permanent staff. EONI employs 4,500 temporary
staff to conduct polling day and for the counting of votes. Without the assistance of the
temporary staff employed we would not be able to run elections successfully.
@TimWardCam @JorgeStolfi @Loukas @ChrisMayLA6
The Electoral Office then advertise for Reserve/Temporary Election staff. You go to their website and download the application form to apply. To be put onto a register to be called upon when needed.
Emeritus Prof Christopher May
Jacqui ☘️
Loukas (They/Them) 🏳️⚧️
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
Jorge Stolfi
Margaret
RoyMotteram