Work in progress
There is a need for attention to the nation’s systems for the registration and identification of voters.
… register of electors — form filled in by someone on behalf of household — what checks that all included? what checks that only eligible included?
⨳We recommend that … ⨳Parliament should consider … ⨳whether or not to introduce Automatic (or Assisted) Voter Registration – See the comprehensive Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust report on AVR at http://tinyurl.com/3953jh7j.
… also concern for fraudulent voting in elections, though scale of any problems seems never to have been reliably assessed.
… nothing to prevent registration of same person at different addresses. Legal, but multiple voting is not. Who checks?
… nothing to prevent a person’s vote being influenced by inducements or intimidation. Possibly illegal if caught, but who checks? And is it wrong for a father to tell his son he must leave home if he votes for “them”? Surely he is just upholding his moral principles? And is it wrong for the Prime Minister to tell the electorate that if they vote for her she’ll let them buy their house at half price? Of course not: she is merely offering her vision of a healthy and prosperous society.
On the other hand, there is much (manufactured) concern about the possibility of electoral fraud.
What to prevent voting on behalf of, or fraudulently in place of, a registered voter? To prevent that we now we have …
⨳Reverse the unnecessary, unhelpful changes made to voter identification regulations for this year’s Local Elections in May 23 and onwards.
⨳Speaking at the National Conservatism conference held in Westminster on Mon 15 May 23, Jacob Rees-Mogg said in his Keynote Address, “Parties that try and (sic) gerrymander end up finding their clever scheme comes back to bite them, as dare I say we found by insisting on voter ID for elections. We found the people who didn’t have ID were elderly and they by and large voted Conservative, so we made it hard for our own voters and we upset a system that worked perfectly well.”