Which party is wrecking election night ?

Of the Norfolk constituencies who say that are still intending to do their general election count on the Thursday night, only two appear to be doing what Iain Dale wants.

So far North Norfolk and Norwich South appear to be the only two that will not be held over until Friday.

Looking at who runs the councils, it really is very interesting.

North Norfolk Count - Conducted by Lib Dem run NNDC.

Norwich South Count - Conducted by Labour run Norwich CC.

Norwich North/Broadland Count - Conducted by Tory run Broadland DC


Mid Norfolk/South West Norfolk - Conducted by Tory run Breckland


N/W Norfolk - Conducted by Tory Run Kings Lynn and West Norfolk BC


Great Yarmouth Count - Conducted by Tory Run Great Yarmouth Borough Council


South Norfolk Count - Conducted by Tory run South Norfolk BC.

So which party is wrecking election night ?

My favourite time - Eve of Poll

Thinking back a few years to my active political involvement (I have not been involved in elections for two years), it has just occurred to me that this time always used to be a really good time for me.

The time I write about it late evening on the eve of poll.

By this stage of a campaign, you usually know if you have done enough, and given that I have never lost an election as an agent or campaign manager, I always tended to know it we were okay. But it was still all dependent on making sure polling day was write. By this time you'd have given out your tellers sheets to those who would be standing on the polling station door, you'd given out "Good Morning" leaflets to your early morning deliverers, got all your car pick ups sorted, got all your pile of polling day "knocking up" leaflets ready in piles and printed out a back up of all your identified Lib Dem voters just in case your printer or computer failed.

There is, at this time, a sort of calm before the storm and a sort of smug satisfaction that you knew you had done as much as you can and that although you probably ached, it was going to be worth it.

Not being actively involved in politics any more (I spent this evening looking after my son who has a chest infection again), I don't miss the campaigning or the canvassing, but I do miss polling day. There is a real buzz about it if it has been planned well.

UK voting system is "Childishly Simple" to set up bogus voters

The BBC reports that Council of Europe have stated that the UK voting system has few proper safeguards and it is wide open to fraud.

The main findings of the Council of Europe are that it is ;

1) Childishly simple to create bogus voters.

2) Postal vote fraud is very easy.

If the opposition parties know this, and both the Lib Dems and Conservatives have been raising the issue of voting fraud for some years, and the Council of Europe knows this, the question is why are labour so keen to keep systems which are so open to fraud ?

Of course, if you take the main allegations of voting fraud, particularly when it appears to be organised, Labour appears to be the main beneficiaries. Perhaps this is why they are so against reforming the system ?

Where Scotland leads England should follow - Local elections should be important

The headline is not just about an English Parliament which I support and would prefer to regional government, but about today's announcement from the Scottish Parliament that Holyrood wants to "decouple" national and local elections.

The last three general elections have been held on the same day as County elections in England which has resulted in local election results having far more to do with national issues rather than local ones. In Norfolk, people should be voting for Norfolk County Council based on what they have done and achieved, or because they are voting personally for a particular candidate. However many councillors, of all parties, have lost seats in recent years on national swings based on people voting in the General Election and largely being unwilling or unable to comprehend that they could alter their vote in the local elections.

Whilst having a local election on the same day as a general election might appear to boost turnout, actually it diminishes the value of local elections, making them a sideshow and less important in people's minds. If we really value democracy it should be heralded, made special, made important. In England County elections have been devalued since 1991 and this has made them seem like a waste of time.

We have enough problems raising turnout without 146,000 votes being rejected

It was evident to me very early on the night of the Scottish elections that something very odd was happening with the voting.

There were in the first few announced results an astonishingly high number of rejected ballots, and with issues in Ohio and Florida in mind, where counting machines rejected tens of thousands of votes in the US presidential elections, it seemed as if we had another scandal on our hands.

A report today concluded that Scotland's voters were let down by inadequate systems, a lack of proper education of the different methods of voting and a lack of planning and organisation by the authorities. the results was that 146,000 votes were not counted.

It is difficult enough giving people a reason to vote anyway with them thinking that their vote might not count. This hardly engenders trust in the democratic process.

Of course much more locally to me, Breckland Council used electronic counting machines which provided in one ward a completely different results from the hand counted version of the result. The report in to the Scotland fiasco concludes that counting machines were not to blame. However, it does seem odd to exonerate counting machines completely. Sometimes there is nothing better than the old, slower but fully transparent system that is the tradition way of counting votes, and that is by a human and by hand.

I am against changing the way votes are counted and think we seriously need to think about the fraud that can go on. Not perhaps as organised and "party political" as the fraud surrounding postal voting, but the fraud of the electorate that goes on by having systems in place that cannot be checked, verified or scrutinised.

Voting Fraud in Bradford

The BBC are reporting that seven men have been charged with voting fraud in Bradford relating to the last General Election.

This makes me want to ask two questions.

1) Are they politically involved in any way ? If so, the political party in question needs to throw them out of their party, should they be found guilty.

2) Why has it taken 2 and a half years for the police to investigate this ? Isn't it about time the police had a national unit who are trained and understand electoral law so these things can be swiftly dealt with.

Time to suspend e-voting says report

A welcome report on to the e-voting initiatives taken last May has concluded that e-voting schemes should be suspended until systems have been checked more thoroughly and security has been increased.

Given the debacle in Breckland this year where it took several days for the count to be concluded, and in one case a seat was counted manually and by e-machine, giving a significantly different result when using the machine's count rather than the verifiable human count, a question mark still hangs over the results in Breckland with many residents I know still believing most of their councillors to lack a mandate.

E- voting was intended to raise turnout. This has failed. It was intended to engage people in elections yet where it has been used the credibility of the results and the elected councillors has been questioned. In short, e-voting should be scrapped and we should stick with the tried and tested pencil and paper. It works, it is verifiable and it is trusted.

The dirty politics of religious politics

I know of few serious politicians who believe that people voting on religious lines is a good part of this country's history or should make up any part of this country's democratic future. yet, it appears that religious politics is alive and well in the UK.

The mass defection of several Labour councillors in ealing to the Tories appears to an outside to me to be based on religion, not policy or electoral issues, and this is to be regretted in modern Britain.

As recently as the 1950's the Orange Order and it's political tentacles still controlled the way seatrs went on Merseyside, yet with the decline in the influence of religion in the UK amongst the Christian population of this country, the power of the Orange order has gone. Attempts in Scotland to form a Christian People's Alliance and across Britain the other religions groups based largely on the pro Life arguments have failed to make any impact, but in parts of the country dominated by immigrant populations, religion still seems to e the issue that defines votes.

I was shocked in my university days to hear from the Lib Dems how Labour and Tory activists attempted to court certain names in parts of Coventry because they had the right connections in the local Mosque or Temple. Perhaps I was naive, but I had hoped that political parties would try and cut across religions, not pander to them. And before anyone gets on their high horse, I am sure that in some parts of the country the Lib Dems do this too. it does not make it right.

So what of Ealing ? Well it appears that one of the defectors to the Tories had sought the Labour nomination. Are we really to believe that he has changed his political colours in such an amazing way in just two weeks ? Or is it down to the fact that with him being rejected, he chose to look at the candidates religions and "contacts" and change on that basis.

I don't like defections be elected councillors or MP's. I find it all rather distasteful. If they are un-elected I see no problem, but changing mid term is being dis-honest to your voters.

Whilst I don't blame the Tories for taking in these defectors, it is a sorry state of affairs that in 2007 religion seems to be having such an effect in a parliamentary by-election. It is something that all of us in all political parties should seek to reject and oppose as it is, in my opinion, degrading to us all and a very dirty type of politics.

In the old days it was "It's not what you know, it's who you know". Now it seems to be "It's not what you pray for, it's who you pray to " .

It's the American "Trailer Trash" problem in the UK

It is well known that Republican run States have pushed for greater use of the most complex ballot papers and electronic voting systems because the Republicans know that people they would call white "trailer trash", who mostly vote Democrat, are more likely to spoil their ballot papers by mistake because they are confused how to fill in their ballot papers. Indeed, it has been argued that the 2% plus of the vote not counted in Ohio at the last presidential election could have tipped the state back to the Democrats had the votes been counted manually.

So it really should come as no surprise that the new voting system in Scotland saw a higher level of spoilt ballots in Scottish seats that were more economically deprived.

1) The lessons from this ? Only have one type of voting system on one given day.

2) Educate people on TV, through information leaflets and at school about how to vote.

or three

3) Stick with first past the post or have a simple version of proportional representation like the Alternative Vote,which I prefer to the single transferable vote anyway - even if it is Lib Dem policy (oops, disagreeing with party policy again !)

Note : Please note I am not calling economically deprived people in Scotland trailer trash.

Piara Khabra has died - Ealing Southall Labour MP

Sad news that Piara Khabra, the oldest MP in the House of Commons has died.

One would imagine that Gordon Brown would want a swift by-election in order to stamp his authority on the Labour Party, although a loss could mortally wound him early on. With the Lib Dems jumping up 14% at the last election ahead of the Tories, who slipped to third, a big by-election battle looks very likely.

Chairman of Electoral Commission pulls out of Iain Dale interview - Draw your own conclusions from this

Iain Dale mentioned some time ago that he was going to be interviewing Sam Young, Chairman of the Electoral Commission on his show on 18 Doughty Street. Now, all of a sudden, he has pulled out of the interview.
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The question has to be asked, why do this right now ?


Could it be the debacle over the Scottish elections ? Might it be the farcical way in which local election counts have been carried out in some districts using less than transparent electronic methods of counting ?


Whatever his reasons are, it is a shame that a public servant is avoiding this important opportunity for questions to be put to him. 18 Doughty Street's audience is a highly educated, politically sophisticated one and it is the ideal method for proper searching questions to be put to him. I know from Iain Dale's comments that he was looking forward to asking those important questions that need to be answered.


As it stands, it appears that Sam Younger is simply wimping out, and given the problems at the moment, it is a disservice to everyone who is interested in protecting democracy and cares about politics.

970 rejected papers ? Are dodgy counting machines catching the US disease ?

Having just heard the result of Jack McConnell in Scotland, I was astonished to hear that there were 970 rejected votes.

I know that in Scotland they are "pioneering" using counting machines and the astonishingly high 970 rejected votes would indicate that if counting machines are being used, they are doing something badly wrong.

Update - Glasgow Kelvin has 1170 rejected papers. What the hell is going on in Scotland ?

Labour running out of excuses over ID cards

I missed this article in The Times, until pointed to it by another blogger, which highlights another, or should I say, the only reason Labour feel they can actually justify ID cards at the moment.

It seems that Labour are running out of excuses as quickly as they can make them up as to why ID cards should be introduced.

Firstly, it was all about protecting us from terrorism. However, they had ID cards in Spain and this didn't protect them from terrorists. On top of this, you can get an ID card by having a passport and as has been shown recently, known terrorists have been issued with passports, sometimes multiple passports, so they are hardly an effective means of validating if you should be given an ID car.

Next, it was all about controlling migrant workers. However, the BBC showed in their news investigation this week that the migrant workers rules are easily flouted by unscrupulous gang masters who care little for the current rules, so will be equally willing to ignore rules on ID cards.

Now, Labour have a new plan. ID cards will stop voter fraud. What is laughable about this is that Labour have ridden roughshod over the opposition party's wishes to be more stringent when introducing changes in voting practise. Ten years ago, apart from one or two incidents (the situation in St Ives springs to mind where there was a big question mark over the 1992 result), election fraud was abnormal and was notable for that reason. Now, because of Labour's insistence on changing the way people vote, voting fraud is an annual occurrence, with reports flying around about it after every local election.

If Labour seriously thought voter fraud could be solved by having ID cards, why would they still be pressing ahead with the idea of text voting or internet voting ?

So as it stands, Labour's new policy seems to be "We need Labour to introduce ID cards in order to stop a problem of voter fraud that was caused by Labour policies.".

It's like taking poison to immunise yourself against another poison, or like the children's song about the woman who swallowed a cat to catch the bird, she swallowed the bird to catch the spider, she swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I guess she'll die ! There's a metaphor there.

What are the implications of TV text and e-voting cock-ups for government plans for e-voting in real elections ?

With more new coming forward that after weeks of bad news about e-voting scams, 10,000 votes from last week's ITV Gameshow marathon were not counted, it makes you wonder if there is actually a problem with technology at the moment which means that electronic forms of remote voting simply are not stringent enough in their checks and are not robust enough in their design to accurately handle voting. If so, what are the implications for the government's attempts to extend e-voting ?

It is clear that text voting has had numerous problems highlighted in recent week, yet this is a way the government want to go whilst phone voting problem occurred at the BBC when on Blue Peter the computer holding all the names and numbers crashed. People always argue that industry and business lead the way in all technologies, and this has a trickle down effect for the rest of us and for the public sector. It appears in this case that the private sector and industry still don't know how to do e-voting in a secure way. If this is so, can we be sure that the government's own systems are secure enough for elections ?

A Lib Dem making total sense on immigrants rights

A big well done to Anders Hanson, who agrees 100% with comments made by migration watch. People often accuse us Lib Dems of being "soft, but Anders comments show that we make complete sense as a party. Read his comments HERE.

Anders explains clearly and lucidly the daft situation that allows Commonwealth citizens the right to vote in elections that European citizens are barred from, but makes even better the point that Irish Citizens, people who are not British at all (indeed, often fiercely so), are entitled to vote in all elections in the UK.

I would actually go one further than Anders and also ask why Irish citizens have the right to join the UK armed forced also ? It always seemed odd that Irish Republicans could join an army that for 20 years was fighting against the IRA. The conflict may be over in Northern Ireland, but isn't it time our laws reflected that Ireland is a separate sovereign state and nothing to do with the UK ?

Oh, and while we are at it, could someone inform the broadcasting companies who insist on giving the Republic of Ireland as much if not more coverage than British nations, as it appears that they too are under the delusion that Ireland is as much a part of the UK as Wales is.

I can't ever remember this happening to one of our candidates at a count !

I guess THIS is the sort of thing that could only happen in Northern Ireland.

A Labour activist one tried to hit me at the 1997 General Election count when I told him we would target his seat in the next local elections (which we did, and we won it), but I can't remember anyone ever being arrested.

Has anybody got any stories to share ?

Researchers discover what the Lib Dems have known about for months - New boundaries favour the Tories

Its amazing what people do at University isn't it.

The University of Plymouth, renowned for their research and analysis of electoral mathematics have discovered that the new parliamentary boundaries will give the Tories a new gain of 12 seats, will mean no change for the Lib Dems and will result in a loss of seats for Labour. How come it takes a university months to discover this yet we in the Lib Dems have been talking about this and discovered it many, many months ago ?

It might be of course that it is because it is the University of Plymouth. I seem to recall them making a prediction before the 1997 general election that in North Norfolk "the Conservatives can rely on five figure majorities over a pretty evenly split opposition for some time to come". Better not tell the University of Plymouth what the result was in 1997, 2001 or 2005 then.

Read more about the "amazing discovery" HERE.

The Times : Tories to flout election cost laws

The Time is running a story today that highlight's the Tories aim to spend more than the election expenses laws permit on campaigning for this year's local elections. Read the story HERE.

There is a wonderful quote in the story from Hazel (is there a minister more useless than me ?) Blears, saying ;

“People will find it unfair that one party can significantly outspend another in this way. This proves the Labour party’s point to Sir Hayden Phillips’s inquiry (into party funding) about the need for annual spending caps.”

Of course Labour never complained in the mid 90's when they had the funds to outspend everyone else, of indeed in key wards in Manchester last year when Labour spent heavily to outspend the Lib Dems using phone banks, autodialers and posted leaflets. Then again, with Labour reportedly £27 million in debt, of course they fear being outspent.

You can read the full Tory local election manual HERE. I have to say, being completely fair, that 95% of it could have been taken (and probably was) from similar Lib Dem manuals, but I cannot remember the Lib Dems encouraging me to flout election spending laws.

Gutless, toothless and impotent - The Electoral Commission is useless !

The committee on Standards in Public Life are calling for a wide ranging reform of the Electoral Commission.

The committee highlighted the fact that fraud is on the increase but the Electoral Commission have allowed the rules on postal voting to be relaxed actually leading to an increase in fraud. Similarly the Electoral Commission have failed to introduce other other security measures to ensure voter registration is fair. Indeed recent cases, not mention by the news media, but highlight by Lib Dem also reflect poorly on the Electoral Commission. The case of thousands of missing voters in certain wards across the country, not commented on by the electoral commission and the fact that the Electoral Commission allowed the Lib Dems to take a £2.4 million donation, then said after the money was spent that they were not sure, then said it was okay, and are now saying they will have to see.

The Electoral Commission is almost a complete waste of space and taxpayers money. Public mistrust of politicians has never been higher yet in many cases it is the decisions of the Electoral Commission that have led to this view.

The Independent has a report on this issue today.

March 2008 General Election ?

According to a number of sources, the dreadful Hazel Blears has written to Labour MP's warning to be prepared for an election in the next 16 months. Read The Times report HERE.

Does this mean an election will happen ? No, not at all. To my mind it is Labour trying to get moribund and inactive Labour local parties to start being more active, select candidates and raise some money.

I know some Labour members in a couple of different constituencies (one is Labour held) and even they say little proper campaigning is going on, so I would guess this announcement is all about getting a sense of urgency and activity from Labour people in preparation for 2009.