Domain: electoralcommission.org.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to electoralcommission.org.uk.
Comments · 14
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Re:20% of the original "Nay" votes
It's been all over the news n and off and you act like it never happened. No wonder you support Brexit: reality just doesn't fit your worldview.
https://www.theguardian.com/co...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-...
https://www.theguardian.com/po...
https://www.electoralcommissio...
Now I'm sure you'll either uiently slink away and pretend you never commented ot tell me why electon fraud is jsut fine really and we should honour the results of a tainted election.
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Re: Slashdot Died when CmdrTaco Left
Under what rock have you been living? Have you completely missed the Brexit referendum?
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Re: Not being used any more
In the UK, we don't need ID to vote - if you're on the electoral register and are eligible you can vote. Registering is compulsory for adults but does expose you to obligations like paying local council taxes so some people don't and are thus disenfranchised.
Any problems with (im)personation or multiple voting appear to be insignificant - there were fewer than 100 criminal instances found in 2016 when around 60 million votes were cast and half those were on the campaign side.
Having people traveling round to vote multiple times seems like a risky and inefficient way of rigging an election. Far better just to hack the voting machines.
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Re:The real question
> It's unheard of in the UK for you to not be able to vote in a referendum because of your residency, rather than your nationality
If you're Irish and resident in the UK, you can vote in UK elections. If you're British and non-resident it gets murkier - you need to be able to demonstrate "a considerable degree of permanence" (according to the Electoral Commission). Same hold true for Commonwealth and European citizens residing in the UK. There are a few obvious exceptions (BFPO etc) but residency is usually the deciding factor. Re-reading your post I realise you specified referenda, not elections, and I honestly don't know if that makes a difference - I concede it might. Does it?
> Similarly he was allowed to continue with a loaded referendum question
"Should Scotland be an independent country?" doesn't seem loaded to me, but I'm open to an explanation. My understanding is that this is what was arrived at after discussions between the Scottish and UK governments.
> bring in the 16 - 18 bracket who are more naive to and hence swayed by populist nationalist rhetoric
Granted, this is one area I think you could be right. I believe in lowering the voting age, but doing it for the first time for the referendum does strike me as dodgy. However, 16-17 year olds appear to be more conservative than we might have thought.
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Re:Nothing to see here
The requirement here is for the UK Electoral Commission To Investigate http://www.electoralcommission... and to ascertain whether those activities amounted to political advertising by a government agency. Where those actions designed to make the policies of the current Government look better, is so, then the government agency us guilty of a crime a subject to prosecution ie the abuse of government funds to promote the activities of the current elected politicians. It is illegal to use government funds for biased political propaganda and this is exactly what has been disclosed.
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Re:Cryptographically signed elections?
No... that's one of the problems with anonymity, it's easier to fake. However, it's very, very important, especially in places in which your vote is more likely to be coerced. The advantages of anonymity far outweigh the disadvantages.
I totally agree. When the UK abandoned this fraud became more common. Of course Muslims are forcing votes in order to get sharia and terrorist friendly representatives:
There are strongly held views, based in particular on reported first-hand experience by some campaigners and elected representatives in particular, that electoral fraud is more likely to be committed by or in support of candidates standing for election in areas which are largely or predominately populated by some South Asian communities, specifically those with roots in parts of Pakistan or Bangladesh.
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Re:All voting systems are vulnerable...
In the UK in particular you *cannot* issue a receipt - anything which can be used to match a vote to a voter is illegal. Even signing your name instead of putting a cross renders your ballot spoiled.
Except, of course, the recording of the ballot paper number next to your name when you vote.
In the past it would have been difficult to automatically match up every vote with a voter but it certainly wouldn't have been difficult to find out who cast a particular vote. "Who voted communist?"
Nowadays I'd expect that the voter lists with the ballot numbers could be scanned and OCRed and the ballot papers run through an automatic feeder. Of course this needs access to the voter lists and ballot papers so not available to everybody.
End of page 25:
Serial numbers4.4 Anecdotal evidence suggests that at every election
Returning Officers - and more often Presiding Officers
in polling stations - receive a number of complaints or
concerns from electors over the use of serial numbers
on ballot papers. Electors are often concerned that the
number allows identification of how they have voted.In fact, serial numbers are used specifically to allow for
the tracing of papers cast fraudulently and are checked
only where a claim of fraud is being investigated and a
court order obtained to allow the identification of the ballot
paper as being that of a particular person. Nevertheless,
the regularity of such complaints, although not great, is
thought to have increased in recent years with the increased
use of postal voting. This is an issue also considered in
the Commission's separate review of absent voting.Tim.
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Re:The Office of the Information Commissioner
The UK government uses the electoral register to sell your data (regardless of whether you "opt out") to third party marketing companies to get revenue.
This is a lie. It's not even maintained at the national level, but at the district council level. By law, anybody can see a copy of the register (under supervised conditions) and certain companies are allowed to use the register for restricted purposes. For example, credit agencies can use it to verify your address. It is illegal for them to pass the data on to anyone else or use it for any but a set of restricted purposes.
The editted version of the register may be bought by anybody, but you can opt out of that. See here for more details.
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Re:UK systems
Putting a cross in a big box is a good way to limit your choices to big party one vs almost identical big party two, without actually offering the possibility of real represntation. Which is probably why the big parties like it so much.
It's also interesting to note that UK voting is NOT anonymous. It is "secret" yes - which means that no-one actually watches you put down your x, but it is not anonymous. Each ballot has a serial number that is matched to your individual voting number. This is supposed to be 'to control fraud', er how? It's not like they publish lists of who everyone voted for so you can check...
I wouldn't recommend voting for any candidate with ties to a "radical" organisation, unless you don't mind the security services keeping a close eye on you. They're unlikely to win anyway given the above big party problem.
More details on ballot 'secrecy' from the electoral commission
Most people don't realise this. -
Re:Open Source?
I'm sure the eVacs system was GPL. It should be out there on a cache somewhere. They are going to use it again this year, so that's ongoing. However, its for polling place voting on isolated LANs, not the web.
In fact, I think this is the issue with the other projects. Free-project.org was a free Internet voting package written in Java, however, the author Jason Kitcat jumped the fence and became an anti-evoting person.
Most other developments are commercial, however, we saw this one for a start. Built with Perl on RH7.2, Apache, MySQL etc, uses an encrypting Java client which is the only bit that can change votes and the source for this was made public, signed etc. -aa -
Re:EU legislation is un-democratic.
Euro elections are held every 5 years.
The last UK Europarl election was on June 10 1999.
If you are on the electoral roll you will get a ballot card for all elections at all levels. If you are not sure whether you are registered, fill out the Electoral Commission form and send it to your local registry.
There is nothing special about Euro elections as far as registration/notification is concerned.
I'm not sure I follow your other concerns - can you elucidate? -
Re:Joy, Bliss. And the problems are ....The electoral roll is now updated monthly and has been for a year. You should not miss being on it, because you can add your name at any time:
The electoral register now comes in two formats, one which is available only to returning officers, credit reference agencies and political parties, and an edited version made available to marketers. You can opt out of being listed in the edited version if you wish.
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Re:Joy, Bliss. And the problems are ....The electoral roll is now updated monthly and has been for a year. You should not miss being on it, because you can add your name at any time:
The electoral register now comes in two formats, one which is available only to returning officers, credit reference agencies and political parties, and an edited version made available to marketers. You can opt out of being listed in the edited version if you wish.
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13 towns in the UK already had e-voting last year
Those Swiss folks obviously didn't search for e-voting info in the UK, because 13 towns in the UK had e-voting for the local council elections in May 2002. So the Swiss initiative certainly isn't a "worldwide first".