p_p_man
The 'Euro' European
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2001
- Posts
- 24,253
...in the world of murky politics.
You may or may not know that this Thursday (7th June) we're having a general election in the UK. Most polls show that Tony Blair is so far ahead that the Conservatives (THAT WOMAN'S old party) have more or less given up and the betting shops are actually paying out now even though the election hasn't happened yet.
This time round it's been decided to allow postal votes whereas before, you either turned up yourself, or had someone vote for you (a proxy who had to be registered with the authorities and was issued with a second polling card in your name).
Guess what? It's slowly being discovered that some households have got more postal votes than people living in the property. A test was carried out by one of our radio stations and all the reporter had to do was to say he wanted to vote by post and could he be sent a form. No check was made on his name (the official at the other end of the line said it wasn't necessary!) no proof was required that he actually lived at that address (again the official said it wasn't necessary) and after carrying out this exercise three times he actually had three postal votes delivered the next day.
Luckily the election is not a close one but if it had been we'd be in the same position as Florida. A couple of dubious votes deciding the next Government.
Now the situation has become more well known we are getting interviews by electoral officials on TV saying that the numbers are so small as not to matter but that an investigation would be carried out, and that as this is by way of an experiment, some anomalies were expected to ocur.
All well and good if they tighten up the procedure for next time but next time the machinery is being put in place for us to vote not only by post but by the Internet as well.
Take us back to the pencil cross on a piece of paper...
You may or may not know that this Thursday (7th June) we're having a general election in the UK. Most polls show that Tony Blair is so far ahead that the Conservatives (THAT WOMAN'S old party) have more or less given up and the betting shops are actually paying out now even though the election hasn't happened yet.
This time round it's been decided to allow postal votes whereas before, you either turned up yourself, or had someone vote for you (a proxy who had to be registered with the authorities and was issued with a second polling card in your name).
Guess what? It's slowly being discovered that some households have got more postal votes than people living in the property. A test was carried out by one of our radio stations and all the reporter had to do was to say he wanted to vote by post and could he be sent a form. No check was made on his name (the official at the other end of the line said it wasn't necessary!) no proof was required that he actually lived at that address (again the official said it wasn't necessary) and after carrying out this exercise three times he actually had three postal votes delivered the next day.
Luckily the election is not a close one but if it had been we'd be in the same position as Florida. A couple of dubious votes deciding the next Government.
Now the situation has become more well known we are getting interviews by electoral officials on TV saying that the numbers are so small as not to matter but that an investigation would be carried out, and that as this is by way of an experiment, some anomalies were expected to ocur.
All well and good if they tighten up the procedure for next time but next time the machinery is being put in place for us to vote not only by post but by the Internet as well.
Take us back to the pencil cross on a piece of paper...
