Student Vote

[NellieMay]

It is known that students have abused the system and voted in two places. Apparently some have been boasting and joking about it! Virtually impossible to check this doesn't happen apparently! Surely this needs to be addressed.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/16/how-to-register-to-vote-if-you-are-a-student-in-the-general-election-664091p


Putting it in News as it the most relevant section.

[naomi24]

anneasquith, //who allowed young people to vote anyway ? //

Labour under Harold Wilson, I think.

[ummmm]

Of course it is, TTT, it's their future.

[Mamyalynne]

Nellie, I hope Rhys James has reported what has 'come to his attention'.

[jim360]

Not necessarily, as long as it's not a backhanded attempt to remove voters from the system who keep picking the party you don't support.

[ToraToraTora]

Labour love young voters because they've just been brainwashed by lefty teachers and believe all that left wing pony. That is until they start getting on in life themselves. Someone asked the other day what turns a socialist into a capitalist, the answer? one word: Assets!

[jim360]

Returning to the original question, it seems to me that it's just a misunderstanding. Being on the electoral register twice is not the same as being allowed two votes in the General Election.

Also, to the guy who commented on that petition asking why two people from ethnic minorities showed their cards and were then sent to another room, insinuating yet more fraud: there are often two or three separate stations at a polling place corresponding to different parts of the constituency ward in question. Those people almost went to the wrong station at first, and on showing their card were directed to the right one. Nothing insidious about that. Sheesh, some people are determined to find a reason to be suspicious...

[Kromovaracun]

3T

Please be aware that the next time you accuse "The Left" (tm) of being anti-democracy or of sour grapes, or of patronising voters, I am going to endlessly spam your posts from this thread back at you.

[NellieMay]

Personally, I think that if I were 18 and a student and was tempted by abolishing
tudent fees, more worthwhile jobs, a £10.00 minimum wage and utopia, I might well be drawn in by a person experienced in protests and rallies who knows how to work a crowd. The benefit of age allows me to see through them!! However, I can't imagine wanting to break the law and vote twice.

[Togo]

Another thing to point out to the "youngster" regarding the free to everyone university promise. It isn't. It will be funded by massive borrowing that will have to be repaid. It will be repaid by they who are young now, not by oldies like me. I paid my tax for 45 years, month in month out. Now not all the young will go to university, some may not even go on to tech colleges or further education course. Most who do go to university will no doubt come from well off backgrounds with parents or guardians well able to assist them, probably Conservative thinkers in fact. The youngster who start work early and start to pay tax straight away will be, unknowingly, funding their lucky privileged contemporaries. They will continue to do so for the rest of their working lives, including paying back the loans taken out by the candy man whilst the well off will get a nice 4 or 5 year holiday and a better job at the end of it than them. Will this "free" further education be extended to foreign students? In which case they will be funding that as well. Not me though, shame.

[ToraToraTora]

what are you on about kromo? I have been totally gracious in accepting the election result, contrast that with the lefties after brexit and name calling we still have. I am merely offering an explanation as to why Labour love young voters and why young voters are usually left wing. No SGs here mate.

[NellieMay]

Jim, the thing is they are not allowed to vote twice, but they can register from home and their university constituency and it is alleged that some students have voted at both polling stations. Who would question it?

[jim360]

Scrapping tuition fees was a Tory manifesto pledge in 2005; the Conservatives were scheduling a minimum wage of £9 by 2020 (not £10, but still a massive year-on-year hike proposed); and I think both parties are kind of keen on offering workers more jobs. May tried selling the idea that "only the Conservatives are the party of the working people".

So... what exactly is the difference? On those three counts, at least, there's not much to split them. Sure, the Tories abandoned the idea of scrapping tuition fees later, but when it was offered it was for the same reason that Corbyn did: an attempt by Michael Howard to attract younger voters to his party.

It didn't work then. There's rather a lot more to the young voters' support for Corbyn than a tuition fee pledge. If you don't get that then you'll just see them voting the same way again next time. And again, and again.

[kvalidir]

I am young , have plenty of assets and am still left wing- likewise my 80 year old grandmother. Being left wing isn't a monopoly for the young whatever you might wish to think, it's a monopoly for those who think their own wellbeing is better served by having a better society as a whole. I don't drive down your road TTT but I'm happy for my taxes to go towards fixing your potholes, just as I will never have children but fully expect to pay towards other peoples. Those people, and you, pay towards my insulin that I would die without- see how it works when you're not a societal isolationist? It's fine- the sky doesn't fall but crime does as education improves.

[dannyk13]

Jim
//There's rather a lot more to the young voters' support for Corbyn than a tuition fee pledge//
Sorry to disagree but just after the election I spoke to two neighbours,both of them students, and they said that they and other students they know had voted because of the promise to abolish student fees.

[jim360]

Well obviously I can't speak for all students, but equally if you assume that those two students represent every young person who voted for Corbyn then you're equally mistaken. But I was speaking for the community as a whole. The pledge to scrap tuition fees will have helped, but it wasn't the *only* reason that (most) young people will have voted for Labour.

And, as I say, similar pledges by the Conservatives signally failed to pick up many young voters, so there again is more to it than that.

[Ellipsis]

I am aware of two reasons that stirred the young to register and vote this time around:

1) tuition fees (although I agree with Togo's comments on this, many of the young don't seem to see it that way)
2) a kind of anti-Brexit protest vote (even though Labour is pro-Brexit and many of their policies, e.g. renationalisation of the railways, rely on Brexit). I guess the thinking is that the Tories inflicted Brexit upon them and they were castigated for not voting then, so they did now.

[dannyk13]

It would be interesting to do a poll of students as to their reason for voting.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Klavidir writes: //Being left wing isn't a monopoly for the young ... it's a monopoly for those who think their own wellbeing is better served by having a better society as a whole.//

Enlightened self-interest, then? Why do you think that is a monopoly of the Left, Klavidir? Do you think conservatives like me do not share your desire for "a better society as a whole"?

[Togo]

Ta Nellie. Funny thing is, I was speaking to my son over the weekend. 23yr old working hard full time. He was all for the "free" education bribe until I pointed out to him just what I have posted here. Oh boy have you ever heard a penny drop and seen the lights come on. He has since put that very point of view to pals of his with the same reaction.....err never thought of it like that is the reaction. Perhaps we should be shouting that message.If the kids are not able to think, we will have to think for them still. :))

[Baldric]

//voting is anonymous//

You really believe that?

Every Polling Station I've ever used they check your name off on the electoral Roll, transfer the number next to your name to your Voting Slip, in pencil, then away you go to cast your 'not so anonymous' vote