Labour Set To Cheat

[dannyk13]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/index.html

[naomi24]

//wouldn't it be more cynical to look to make it difficult for them to do so as opposed to easy? //

With postal voting available to all it's not difficult for anyone to vote. The system is wrong.

[jim360]

Presumably a system in which voting is relatively easy is preferable to one in which it's difficult. Voting is a right in a democracy. Stands to reason that you want to open access as widely as possible. By contrast there is very little evidence that fraud at the ballot box occurs on a wide scale. Most electoral offences relate to campaign finance violations and the like.

[naomi24]

//Presumably a system in which voting is relatively easy is preferable to one in which it's difficult.//

We have a system where voting is easy. Allowing people to vote twice - for whatever reason - is wrong. No excuses. Just wrong.

[jim360]

I don't argue with the fact that people voting twice is wrong (although, as I've already mentioned, it used to be perfectly legal and indeed a deliberate part of the system), but I think the theoretical possibility is a price worth paying for ensuring that as many people as possible can vote. Most voters are perfectly honest. The larger "crime" when it comes to elections is voter apathy, the scale of which runs into well over 10 million potential votes lost. If more people made the choice, the effect of double-voting would be swallowed up with so much room to spare.

I hope that every voter who tries such dirty tactics of voting twice is caught and punished, but I don't think that a handful of such con artists is worth tightening the system in a way that penalises those who *do* use the system fairly.

[Jackdaw33]

Jim is thinking of the time when universities had their own MP (abolished 1948).

[AuntPollyGrey]

Students can't vote twice. I'm seriously not going to waste my typing fingers any longer. I'm quite aware anyone can get a postal vote I'm not stupid. You do however have to give a reason for sending ballot paper(s) to an alternative address, which is pertinent to the point I was making about students being able to vote at their Uni address but NOT at their home address. Go look at the application form

[dannyk13]

Aunt Polly look at the post at 11.44.

[THECORBYLOON]

APG, a student could ask for a postal vote in one constituency (giving no reasons for doing so) and vote in person in the constituency where the uni is. It is not legal to vote twice but it is not impossible.

[retrocop]

//By contrast there is very little evidence that fraud at the ballot box occurs on a wide scale.//
Absolute nonsense. There is plenty of evidence of election fraud.
Tower Hamlets Mayoral elections plus Bradford and other mainly Asian communities.
Corbyn has shoehorned a Muslim into the Prime Minister's constituency as a Labour candidate. They are bent as a nine bob note.

https://www.desiblitz.com/content/watchdog-uncovers-electoral-fraud-within-asian-communities

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08/11/election-fraud-allowed-to-take-place-in-muslim-communities-becau/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1596032/vote-rigging-in-muslim-communities-goes-unchallenged-because-pc-police-are-scared-of-causing-offence/

[Mozz71]

Watchdog RC? I thought the BBC were a filthy, corrupt, loony left organisation not to be trusted under any circumstances. ;-)

[Spicerack]

They are. Different watchdog thank goodness cos the aBBC will only reluctantly report on such things when there's no denying it any longer.

[Mozz71]

Fair dinkums, my mistake.

[jim360]

I'm going by studies from the Electoral Commission -- as well as countless other similar studies in both the UK and other countries -- and I'd tend to take their data far more seriously than isolated news reports. In 2017, for example, despite similar stories like this circulating, in the end there was only one confirmed case of double-voting fraud in that year's election. I just can't see any concrete evidence to suggest that there's any greater rate than that. It's just hearsay -- and hearsay with more than a little political interest thrown in, since it is invariably Labour votes that are accused of originating from fraudulent sources.

[jim360]

Whatever the truth of the matter, though, it should at least be acknowledged that the UK system is at or near one of the fairest and most open in the world. Hardly perfect: the Tories were done for campaign finance violations on the back of the 2015 campaign, and Vote Leave (or Leave.EU, or both) got fined by the Electoral Commission, but even these are in my opinion minor offences and don't or should not call into question the integrity of the results (although that hasn't stopped people from trying).

We don't have the problems of newer democracies in, for example, voter intimidation, or deliberate bribery, or just stuffing the ballot box. Perhaps I'm complacent but I think there is more reason to trust the system than not. At most a few hundred votes, out of millions, might turn out to be fraudulent, be they proxy votes cast against the will of the absent voter, or the odd postal vote too many. Each one is a crime and deserves to be treated as such, but it's a nonsense to doubt the overall result.

[pixie374]

We always respect the results, don't we, Jim? ;-)

[douglas9401]

I'm struggling with the idea that a student would do something twice that didn't involve a pub.

[Spicerack]

Oof, pixie. ;-)

[jim360]

But of course, pix :P

[pixie374]

Ha! :-) x

[jim360]

Well, presumably you know already what the difference is between calling the integrity of a vote into question and arguing that it doesn't carry a permanent and irrevocable mandate.

I mean, even the very fact that we are having our second general election four years after we had one that was supposed to have a fixed result until 2020 should also demonstrate the point.