Lewisham East

[gwynthegriff]

Jun 14, 2018 17:15:47 GMT @priceofdawn said:

Jun 14, 2018 17:07:27 GMT Izzyeviel said:

That explains why the old bloke outside my polling station seemed saddened when I told him I hadn't kept mine. 

This seems dodgy, are they allowed to ask how you voted??

no nor can they tell you how to vote. He could have asked for your address though.

It's part of a get out the vote campaign developed in Reading. Activists canvass keep a note of their promise and cross off voters when theyve voted. I remember when you had to cut and stick every name and lay all your papers on long tables with rulers to cross out each name

Why has Reading a special claim to this concept?

[Pete Whitehead]

Jun 14, 2018 17:07:27 GMT Izzyeviel said:

Jun 14, 2018 15:55:16 GMT @barnabymarder said:

people from the parties asking you for your polling card number after you've voted (sometimes before) so that they can tell which of their promised supporters has voted

That explains why the old bloke outside my polling station seemed saddened when I told him I hadn't kept mine. 

This seems dodgy, are they allowed to ask how you voted??

You sound as if you've never participated in an election before today as an activist or even as a voter. Strange as the Lib Dems round my way are more obsessed with telling than anyone

[Davıd Boothroyd]

Jun 14, 2018 17:28:03 GMT gwynthegriff said:

Jun 14, 2018 17:15:47 GMT @priceofdawn said:

no nor can they tell you how to vote. He could have asked for your address though.

It's part of a get out the vote campaign developed in Reading. Activists canvass keep a note of their promise and cross off voters when theyve voted. I remember when you had to cut and stick every name and lay all your papers on long tables with rulers to cross out each name

Why has Reading a special claim to this concept?

Just happens that it was a system developed by Reading Labour Party to help defend Ian Mikardo's marginal Parliamentary seat in the early 1950s.

[Izzyeviel]

Jun 14, 2018 17:30:43 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Jun 14, 2018 17:07:27 GMT Izzyeviel said:

That explains why the old bloke outside my polling station seemed saddened when I told him I hadn't kept mine. 

This seems dodgy, are they allowed to ask how you voted??

You sound as if you've never participated in an election before today as an activist or even as a voter. Strange as the Lib Dems round my way are more obsessed with telling than anyone

I've voted in every election possible since 2008/9. Mainly in central London, but until this May have never experienced this. 

[tonyhill]

In my activist days I used to really enjoy telling. It was a chance to sit down for an hour or two and take it easy after the freneticism of the campaign, and to chat to random members of the other parties in a non-partisan environment because it is a situation in which everyone has something to gain by co-operating to get as many of the voters' numbers as possible. I have done knocking up but eventually refused because I felt that if the candidate hadn't done enough to motivate people to want to come out and vote for him/her then interrupting their tea/Coronation Street/children's bedtimes wasn't something I wanted to do. I know...."I was One of the Winchester Two"! Still got the badge.

[andrew111]

There is a long and typically comprehensive and informative preview of Lewisham East by Andrew Teale, along with the two local ballots here:

britainelects.com/2018/06/13/previews-14-jun-2018/

[carlton43]

Jun 14, 2018 17:26:20 GMT gwynthegriff said:

Jun 14, 2018 17:07:27 GMT Izzyeviel said:

That explains why the old bloke outside my polling station seemed saddened when I told him I hadn't kept mine. 

This seems dodgy, are they allowed to ask how you voted??

Not if they want to remain there for any length of time.

Practices have varied over the years by time and by location.

My experience from 1966 (gulp!) to 2000-ish was:

Tellers were permitted to stand outside the polling station. Often they were provided with chairs; even a table! If there was a lobby then they would be allowed in there. As voters went in they would be asked "Hello. Could I have your number please?". 75% would look at the card and read out the number; 15% would say they had forgotten to bring it, but would then be asked for their name & address which most would give; 10% would refuse, politely or less so. Agents, Tellers and Polling Station staff got on fine. All was - generally - sunny. [ There were potential pitfalls but I won't list them here, mostly involving IME unsavoury Labour types ]

Then, from about 1997 (cough ...) for some reason the rules started to change (cough ...). No longer allowed inside or to sit in many cases (not great for older volunteers when it was p***ing down, or cold); barred from asking on the way in, only on the way out. ( "Can I have your number please?" "What's that?" "It's on the card that you handed to the polling clerk and which he has now put in a bin ...") We went from being people who helped the electoral process to some sort of sinister threat to public security and decency.

And the same people who brought in these changes also moaned about declining political participation.

Well said!  Stupidity rules....Not OK!

[andrew111]

Jun 14, 2018 17:26:20 GMT gwynthegriff said:

Jun 14, 2018 17:07:27 GMT Izzyeviel said:

That explains why the old bloke outside my polling station seemed saddened when I told him I hadn't kept mine. 

This seems dodgy, are they allowed to ask how you voted??

Not if they want to remain there for any length of time.

Practices have varied over the years by time and by location.

My experience from 1966 (gulp!) to 2000-ish was:

Tellers were permitted to stand outside the polling station. Often they were provided with chairs; even a table! If there was a lobby then they would be allowed in there. As voters went in they would be asked "Hello. Could I have your number please?". 75% would look at the card and read out the number; 15% would say they had forgotten to bring it, but would then be asked for their name & address which most would give; 10% would refuse, politely or less so. Agents, Tellers and Polling Station staff got on fine. All was - generally - sunny. [ There were potential pitfalls but I won't list them here, mostly involving IME unsavoury Labour types ]

Then, from about 1997 (cough ...) for some reason the rules started to change (cough ...). No longer allowed inside or to sit in many cases (not great for older volunteers when it was p***ing down, or cold); barred from asking on the way in, only on the way out. ( "Can I have your number please?" "What's that?" "It's on the card that you handed to the polling clerk and which he has now put in a bin ...") We went from being people who helped the electoral process to some sort of sinister threat to public security and decency.

And the same people who brought in these changes also moaned about declining political participation.

Well, it is spotty, but the arrangements you recall from Before The Flood still persist at at least one polling station in Kirklees I am aware of! The practice of telling has certainly decayed away however, and I suspect the changes you mention are more due to the unfamiliarity of Presiding Officers with the practice than any Blairite plot to undermine democracy!

[spqr]

Jun 14, 2018 10:56:22 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

Jun 14, 2018 10:41:20 GMT hullenedge said:

Years ago there was an article in the New Statesman that suggested that the ballot papers cast for 'extremist' candidates were put to one side for inspection by a Special Branch officer. It's piffle. I worked with colleagues with very strong views...unless they were voting Liberal in the privacy of the booth.

It came from a response to The Guardian 'Notes and Queries' section on 23 March 1992. One Michael Wilson wrote that in the town where he was a council officer in the 1960s, after each election, the town clerk would go through the votes cast for Communist candidates, cross-reference the serial number on the ballot, identify the voters, and send the list to Special Branch.

I wish I could find the original article. For some reason this edition is missing from the Guardian's digital archive.

Here it is:

Notes & Queries

The Guardian (London, England). (Mar. 23, 1992): News: p23.

Byline: BRIAN WHITAKER

QUESTION: What happens to the voting slips used in British elections after they have been counted?

- UNDER the Representation of the People Act 1983 the Returning Officer, usually a senior official of the local council, has to ensure that all ballot papers, counterfoils and the polling clerks' marked copies of the electoral register are safely deposited with the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery (a senior officer of the Lord Chancellor's Department). This is so that if any corrupt or illegal election practices are reported the appropriate documents are available for inspection.

All such documents are supposed to be officially sealed so that there is no chance of interference by any party and, according to the 1983 act, the seal can only be broken by the order of the High Court or Parliament itself. In practice ballot papers are simply bundled-up into paper sacks and transported to a warehouse in Hayes, Middlesex, for the statutory period of one year and one day. Following the 1987 general election, I reported on the disposal of the 7,000 sacks of this 'low-grade confidential waste' for a national newspaper. The papers were transported by truck from the Hayes warehouse to be incinerated in the North London Waste Authority plant at Enfield.

During that process we witnessed dozens of sacks splitting and many hundreds of spent ballot papers spilling for all to see. This adds weight to the conspiracy theory that security around the election documents is very lax, and that the vote-tracing procedure has been used to identify people voting for fringe candidates.

Votes can be traced by matching the numbered ballot paper to its similarly numbered counterfoil; the numbered counterfoil also bears the voter's registration number from the electoral register which is hand-written by the Polling Clerk when the ballot paper is issued.

As all the ballot papers for each candidate - including fringe candidates such as Sinn Fein, communists, fascists, nationalists, etc - are bundled together, anyone having access to those documents can speedily trace the name and address of every voter for such candidates if they wish.

In 1981 Gordon Winter - a former agent of BOSS, the South African Secret Service - writing in his book, Inside Boss, claimed that the South African government knew the identity of everyone who voted for the Communist Party of Great Britain - thanks to British intelligence using this simple vote-tracing procedure. In any event, the notion that we have a secret vote is very misleading.

One positive outcome of the last general election, however, was that the incineration of 91 tons of ballot papers contributed to the 21 megawatts per hour output of the North London Waste Authority plant, which supplies electricity to Tottenham. - David Northmore (author, The Freedom Of Information Handbook), London W1.

I do not know what happens to the voting slips for Conservative candidates, after they have been counted, but in the mid-1960s those for communists were tallied against their counterfoils in the ballot books (just like chequebooks) and those who had had the temerity to vote for a communist were identified from the electoral roll. Their names were forwarded to Special Branch and to MI5, almost certainly as a matter of routine.

The source for this information was a good one. He was a postgraduate student doing his doctoral research on local government in a Midlands steel town where he was attached to the town clerk's department. One day he opened a cupboard, looking for some documents, and found instead a large number of ballot slips, all of which were marked in favour of a communist candidate in the local elections. The town clerk returned and found the student with the slips and told him (knowing the student's safely right-wing views) that it was one of his regular chores to forward the names of communist voters to the Special Branch.

As the town had a strong communist tradition it was a recurrent task for the town clerk and the slips had been put to one side until he had time to deal with them. The then student (my informant) saw nothing wrong with this procedure - which made his account the more believable. - Michael Wilson, Thame, Oxon.

[andrew111]

Jun 14, 2018 20:11:16 GMT spqr said:

Jun 14, 2018 10:56:22 GMT Davıd Boothroyd said:

It came from a response to The Guardian 'Notes and Queries' section on 23 March 1992. One Michael Wilson wrote that in the town where he was a council officer in the 1960s, after each election, the town clerk would go through the votes cast for Communist candidates, cross-reference the serial number on the ballot, identify the voters, and send the list to Special Branch.

I wish I could find the original article. For some reason this edition is missing from the Guardian's digital archive.

Here it is:

Notes & Queries

The Guardian (London, England). (Mar. 23, 1992): News: p23.

Byline: BRIAN WHITAKER

QUESTION: What happens to the voting slips used in British elections after they have been counted?

- UNDER the Representation of the People Act 1983 the Returning Officer, usually a senior official of the local council, has to ensure that all ballot papers, counterfoils and the polling clerks' marked copies of the electoral register are safely deposited with the Clerk of the Crown in Chancery (a senior officer of the Lord Chancellor's Department). This is so that if any corrupt or illegal election practices are reported the appropriate documents are available for inspection.

All such documents are supposed to be officially sealed so that there is no chance of interference by any party and, according to the 1983 act, the seal can only be broken by the order of the High Court or Parliament itself. In practice ballot papers are simply bundled-up into paper sacks and transported to a warehouse in Hayes, Middlesex, for the statutory period of one year and one day. Following the 1987 general election, I reported on the disposal of the 7,000 sacks of this 'low-grade confidential waste' for a national newspaper. The papers were transported by truck from the Hayes warehouse to be incinerated in the North London Waste Authority plant at Enfield.

During that process we witnessed dozens of sacks splitting and many hundreds of spent ballot papers spilling for all to see. This adds weight to the conspiracy theory that security around the election documents is very lax, and that the vote-tracing procedure has been used to identify people voting for fringe candidates.

Votes can be traced by matching the numbered ballot paper to its similarly numbered counterfoil; the numbered counterfoil also bears the voter's registration number from the electoral register which is hand-written by the Polling Clerk when the ballot paper is issued.

As all the ballot papers for each candidate - including fringe candidates such as Sinn Fein, communists, fascists, nationalists, etc - are bundled together, anyone having access to those documents can speedily trace the name and address of every voter for such candidates if they wish.

In 1981 Gordon Winter - a former agent of BOSS, the South African Secret Service - writing in his book, Inside Boss, claimed that the South African government knew the identity of everyone who voted for the Communist Party of Great Britain - thanks to British intelligence using this simple vote-tracing procedure. In any event, the notion that we have a secret vote is very misleading.

One positive outcome of the last general election, however, was that the incineration of 91 tons of ballot papers contributed to the 21 megawatts per hour output of the North London Waste Authority plant, which supplies electricity to Tottenham. - David Northmore (author, The Freedom Of Information Handbook), London W1.

I do not know what happens to the voting slips for Conservative candidates, after they have been counted, but in the mid-1960s those for communists were tallied against their counterfoils in the ballot books (just like chequebooks) and those who had had the temerity to vote for a communist were identified from the electoral roll. Their names were forwarded to Special Branch and to MI5, almost certainly as a matter of routine.

The source for this information was a good one. He was a postgraduate student doing his doctoral research on local government in a Midlands steel town where he was attached to the town clerk's department. One day he opened a cupboard, looking for some documents, and found instead a large number of ballot slips, all of which were marked in favour of a communist candidate in the local elections. The town clerk returned and found the student with the slips and told him (knowing the student's safely right-wing views) that it was one of his regular chores to forward the names of communist voters to the Special Branch.

As the town had a strong communist tradition it was a recurrent task for the town clerk and the slips had been put to one side until he had time to deal with them. The then student (my informant) saw nothing wrong with this procedure - which made his account the more believable. - Michael Wilson, Thame, Oxon.

There are some further rather disturbing anecdotes  along these lines here: www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,,-1051,00.html

Including one from as recently as 2008, where prisoners in Wetherby Open Prison were observed apparently correlating votes with voters in return for "snout"

[Izzyeviel]

We need to change the way we count votes, its too slow. If this was America we'd all be in bed by now. How hard can it be? #bored

[Deleted]

Jun 14, 2018 22:12:49 GMT Izzyeviel said:

We need to change the way we count votes, its too slow. If this was America we'd all be in bed by now. How hard can it be? #bored

we have trialed other voting methods in local elections

[Jack]

Jun 14, 2018 22:12:49 GMT Izzyeviel said:

We need to change the way we count votes, its too slow. If this was America we'd all be in bed by now. How hard can it be? #bored

More ballot papers, Stephanie!

[LDCaerdydd]

Jun 14, 2018 22:12:49 GMT Izzyeviel said:

We need to change the way we count votes, its too slow. If this was America we'd all be in bed by now. How hard can it be? #bored

Four hours for a stand alone election in an urban seat on a low turnout is bloody ridiculous.

[Deleted]

Jun 14, 2018 22:15:32 GMT LDCaerdydd said:

Jun 14, 2018 22:12:49 GMT Izzyeviel said:

We need to change the way we count votes, its too slow. If this was America we'd all be in bed by now. How hard can it be? #bored

Four hours for a stand alone election in an urban seat on a low turnout is bloody ridiculous.

low staff numbers

[timrollpickering]

Jun 14, 2018 22:12:49 GMT Izzyeviel said:

We need to change the way we count votes, its too slow. If this was America we'd all be in bed by now. How hard can it be? #bored

"They need a small hours declaration not an automated counting system!"

[Deleted]

Jun 14, 2018 17:26:20 GMT gwynthegriff said:

Jun 14, 2018 17:07:27 GMT Izzyeviel said:

That explains why the old bloke outside my polling station seemed saddened when I told him I hadn't kept mine. 

This seems dodgy, are they allowed to ask how you voted??

Not if they want to remain there for any length of time.

Practices have varied over the years by time and by location.

My experience from 1966 (gulp!) to 2000-ish was:

Tellers were permitted to stand outside the polling station. Often they were provided with chairs; even a table! If there was a lobby then they would be allowed in there. As voters went in they would be asked "Hello. Could I have your number please?". 75% would look at the card and read out the number; 15% would say they had forgotten to bring it, but would then be asked for their name & address which most would give; 10% would refuse, politely or less so. Agents, Tellers and Polling Station staff got on fine. All was - generally - sunny. [ There were potential pitfalls but I won't list them here, mostly involving IME unsavoury Labour types ]

Then, from about 1997 (cough ...) for some reason the rules started to change (cough ...). No longer allowed inside or to sit in many cases (not great for older volunteers when it was p***ing down, or cold); barred from asking on the way in, only on the way out. ( "Can I have your number please?" "What's that?" "It's on the card that you handed to the polling clerk and which he has now put in a bin ...") We went from being people who helped the electoral process to some sort of sinister threat to public security and decency.

And the same people who brought in these changes also moaned about declining political participation.

I'm glad to have never had as poor experience as that. I've only ever stood twice I've sat in every other every year since 2009.

You have forgot when people read out the wrong number and half a dozen people have the same 3 digit number

[LDCaerdydd]

Jun 14, 2018 22:20:04 GMT @priceofdawn said:

Jun 14, 2018 22:15:32 GMT LDCaerdydd said:

Four hours for a stand alone election in an urban seat on a low turnout is bloody ridiculous.

low staff numbers

Councils can claim back the cost of Parliamentary elections from the MoJ so it shouldn’t be an issue.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

"With a bit of luck"

[Sibboleth]

Jun 14, 2018 22:12:49 GMT Izzyeviel said:

We need to change the way we count votes, its too slow. If this was America we'd all be in bed by now. How hard can it be? #bored

It's quicker just about everywhere else for one reason alone, and that's because each polling division counts its own votes and reports them in.