Jason Kitcat

Postal voting is a more popular voting innovation than e-voting, so it's no huge surprise to see VoteHere follow the money… Using technology they created for electronic voting they have announced a postal vote audit tracking product.

Not much use for this in the UK as we still have numbered ballots. But I like the idea of this product – it effectively allows anonymous tracking of the ballots, including for the voters if required so you can get FedEx type assurance of the vote's arrival for counting. This would certainly help boost confidence after this year's negative coverage in the leadup to the General Election.

More info…

The Electoral Commission’s latest report “Securing the Vote” is brilliant, it’s not just the best of their previous reports (superbly useful in its own right)… It’s also a comprehensive, yet readable, summary of the “story so far” for the UK electoral system and the modernisation programme worked on since 1997. Very valuable indeed.

The reports reminds the reader again and again how many times the Commission has asked the Government for individual voter registration to be implemented. No doubt what they want there and good on them, it’s a vital improvement for securing our elections particularly when multiple channels are in use.

Also tucked in the report is quite a large land grab, the Commission asks to take central control of funding all electoral activities. Could be useful, but it could also compromise the Commission’s independence if it had to assess its own ‘work’. I quote:

We recommend that core funding for electoral services (i.e.
funding for staffing, training, infrastructure, registration services
and conducting UK elections and referendums) should come from
the Consolidated Fund via The Electoral Commission, so that the
funding can be matched with national standards which the
Commission would also establish.

Proposals are out for new legislation to shore up our creaky, old electoral system. The details are very sketchy, here’s what I can find:

• A BBC News report
• The Guardian
• A minuscule statement from The Electoral Commission
• I can find nothing on the Department for Constitutional Affairs or GNN sites.

The new law, as reported, doesn’t really offer much the main change is a heavy criminal penalty for postal ballot related fraud and a requirement for more information to be included on registration forms which are still to be per-household.

The Guardian reports that individual voter registrations would cost £23m more (per year, election, they don’t say) which may be why Lord Falconer has dodged individual forms in favour of keeping household registrations. This is despite Northern Ireland using individual registration on the basis that it does cut fraud. Unfortunately individual registration did reduce the total number of voters recorded when introduced in Northern Ireland. In the minds of those politicians who love playing simplistic turnout numbers games, this decline is a bad thing. However the drop in numbers may partially be accounted for by the elimination of fraudulent registrations that cannot be perpetrated with individual registrations. Note that the Electoral Commission also has been in favour of individual registrations.

Money and voter numbers aside, the real issue is when are we ever going to introduce a modern electoral register system. With people being highly mobile these days we are crying out for positive action to arise like a phoenix from the ashes of LASER and CORE, the previous codenames for attempts to launch a fully connection electronic national register. Such a register is key to allowing at least semi-secure multi-channel voting and yet was totally absent from today’s media reports.

Lack of electronic registers aside, criticism from both the Tories and the LibDems has been spot on. The blues argued that this was merely tinkering, it is, there is nothing fundamental being changed. The yellows pointed out that while greater penalties may deter some, with the current system fraud is so hard to detect the penalties are by the by.

The other proposal in the legislation is to prevent political parties being overly involved in the process of registration and collecting ballots. Personally I think there is nothing wrong with parties encouraging people to register but they should go nowhere near ballots before or after completion. It just avoids any opportunities for allegations to be made.

Finally, on the process of how these proposals have been introduced, have I been living under a rock? There has been (as far as I can tell) no consultation at all on these changes. It seems like the legislation is being rushed, without proper discussion. Not again.

A LibDem councillor (and parliamentary candidate) represented by a former Tory MP went to court asking for the current postal voting setup to be declared “incompatible” with our human rights laws as the “free expression of the will of the people” would be denied.

It was a brave move and those behind this should be congratulated for trying to make a stand. Unfortunately the judge felt that the plaintiff had not actually been the victim of fraud yet so could not come to the courts. If after the election fraud was thought to have occurred legal remedies exist, or so the judge thought. A shame but an understandable outcome. BBC News report

I must say I'm surprised that they didn't go in with the secret ballot angle which is also in the human rights legislation and postal ballots plainly breach secrecy. I quote:

ARTICLE 3: RIGHT TO FREE ELECTIONS The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.
– Human Rights Act 1998 Part II The First Protocol

Free elections are a bit hard to pin down legally but the secret ballot is fundamentally important and very clear to define. Does anyone know why this wasn't the approach taken in the courts? Am I missing something?