UKH

My daughter now has three polling cards for the Dec 12 election - one in her old Uni house in London, one in her new house, and one here at her family home. She only registered this time for her current address but the old ones keep coming. 

Obviously this is good in some respects since it means that she doesn't need to travel to vote (hence is more likely to vote, although she was anyway) and can vote where her vote has more of a chance of counting.

However, it doesn't sound to me like one-person-one-vote democracy. There are likely to be plenty of young people in this same situation and it would be incredibly easy to cast your vote twice if you wanted to in two different locations. I am sure this is illegal but I doubt anyone would ever find out.

A quick search hasn't revealed any information about stopping polling cards to old addresses. It could be there but it is currently being swamped by the 'How to vote' questions.

I am not sure if I have a question associated with this observation, it just seems oddly chaotic and something that nobody ever mentions.

Alan

Doesn't the form updating the electoral role specifically require people no longer at an address to be removed?

I think when you proactively contact the electoral registration people to say "I live at this address" they don't remove people who they already have registered at that address. When the electoral people write to you every X years to ask who lives there I believe they will remove people you say do not live there.

Sounds to me like someone's not been sending those forms in / updating ditgitally those electoral roll letters that all householders get annually.

Many of my students will be registered to vote in both their university constituency and their family home constituency so they'll all get two polling cards. It's their choice as to where they cast their vote, but it is illegal to cast your vote in each. How they police it I don't know...

I've seen it mentioned in most elections. Students in particular have two addresses and two places where they can vote, but it's illegal to do both. However, it's probably impossible to police, unless the voter in person does something stupid, like brag on social media with a video of them doing so.

As a student I always voted in Dundee, not East Lothian, because that's where I was at the time. But in a summer election I could have voted at home.

I guess you could have all voters given an ID (their NI number) and then you could log all voter ID's used at each polling station and drill into the data. But we are a good way from that.

I found this - https://www.eaststaffsbc.gov.uk/content/individual-electoral-registration-f...?

The problem here is that it isn't the house owner that has the responsibility any more, it is the individual. I think there may still be a form that arrives (or gives a web address) to check the voters at a certain address although I can't remember receiving one recently. 

If I had got/did get that form then I would have kept my daughter registered here in case she happened to be down. I don't see any way to get her easily removed from the one at her old address in London though. It seems that she would need to actively chase that one up. 

I wonder if the new system is adding redundant (but still fraud-able) voting cards to the system all over the country because there isn't a direct link between registering after you have moved, and de-registering from an old address.  Let's face it, there is no photo on a voting card - you can just hand it in and vote with no proof of ID.

I can't help thinking there are countries in Africa that would look at our system with their jaws on the floor at the lax attitude to voter eligibility (and probably vote counting as well).

Alan

It's because there is no national system. You register locally and they don't talk to each other. 

I suspect you are right.  However, voter fraud seems to be a miniscule problem (unless it's a large undetected problem...)

https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/sites/default/files/pdf_file/Fraud-a...

I consult on elections in many developing countries, and multiple voting is usually a big issue, albeit in practice much more a perception of unfairness rather than seeing actual abuse widely enough to be potentially result-changing. To be fair though, the actual cases of multiple voting are often impossible to quantify.

There are plenty of IT systems around that can easily prevent this, albeit at considerable cost. Each, however, also brings with it other issues such as reduced trust in the voting and counting system once more is being done electronically.

The 'easy' way to find out whether multiple voting actually happened would be to data enter every recorded voter who was issued a ballot. This would be hugely expensive, but more than that, it would create an electronic database of people's voting habits and locations, which itself could be very much open to abuse, so wouldn't be a course of action to be undertaken unless there really was evidence of very widespread multiple voting.

On a more preventative level, as long as all polling stations are data linked, it would be very possible to implement a system whereby someone with more than one registration coming to vote will trigger a notification to all other places they are registered, but even that is not without problems and potential disenfranchisement.

The only thing that can really be achieved relatively easily and safely is to limit the number of multiple registrations in the first place, and it's difficult to see a justification for more than two for any person. Timing of late registration may be a cause and really voter cards should not be sent out until the register is finalised. In my experience though, no system is perfect and there are usually good reasons why apparent anomalies are allowed to persist, which is not to say we should be complacent, but perhaps not too trigger happy in jumping to conclusions of widespread abuse of perceived loopholes.

Stamping hands with hard to remove dye is a low tech option used in some countries isn't it? Can't see it catching on here, too much moaning about chemicals among other concerns.

Given the generally high level of voter apathy I suspect the essentially trust based 'students vote only once' system is reasonable and perfectly adequate in reality. That people are worrying about it is probably more a reflection of how debased and polarised our politics has become than any real threat.

jk

'Finger-ink' is very widely used, yes. And pretty effective too, although as ever there are ways around it (coating finger in removable substance before voting) and other problems with it. Nothing is every 100% effective.

I do agree that the measures in place should reflect, as far as we can gauge, the actual incidence of abuse rather than the scaremongering potential for abuse that's very easy to throw about.

I guess my point is that the new system seems to be just creating more surplus voting cards year on year. Having said that I agree that it isn't a big problem currently when compared to increasing the number of people actually voting.

Alan

Thanks John. I remember our conversation on the way to Dent d'Orlu a couple of years ago where you described the UK ballot box system, and the way it deals with the full ballot boxes on the way to the counting venues, and said that it would have failed your test for a fair election.

Alan

It's fair as long as it delivers the result intended by legitimate voters. It's more a question of how easy it is for that result to be unfairly skewed or manipulated, set against the likelihood of that actually happening in practice.

I get the impression that the UK has brushed up its practices enormously over the last decade or two, in response I think more to perceived potential for abuse than as a result of actual abuse, but I'm sure there are still many areas in which it could be further improved.

That's an undeniable truism, but is a practically worthless statement since it's impossible to test in any particular case. How can we ever know whether or not the result delivered is the one 'intended by legitimate voters'?

Well obviously we can't, not completely and not without causing other complications anyway. But what we can do is be alert to potential for abuse and look for ways to detect it. For instance, postal voting has been criticised a lot lately, with some justification, but if we were to compare postal and in-person ballot results, and then compare each across constituencies and regions, it may well become quite clear if there were notable discrepancies. Too late to fix by then, probably, but refining systems for the next election should be a constant pursuit.

There are some pretty clever ways people have developed for detecting voting fraud, not all of which will be relevant to the UK (I don't know much about the detail of UK voting). Individual actions will of course often be virtually impossible to discover but at the same time will have an extremely low chance of changing any result. I'd be pretty confident that most strategic attempts to bias results on a significant scale will leave detectable traces somewhere along the way.

Also, don't forget that you don't need a polling card to Vote. If on the electoral roll, you can just turn up to your designated station.

No argument with any of that. It was your previous turn of phrase (or suggested metric) I was highlighting.

Don't forget in local elections students can legally vote both at home and at university (assuming its different areas)

Somebody mentioned the same thing to me the other day. I have since wondered if the same thing applies to anybody who lives in several different locations (if you see what I mean)? Or is this rule solely applicable to students?