Tag Archives: postal voting

How were the Scottish elections run?

By Mark Pack | Published 28th October 2011 - 3:53 pm

The Electoral Commission’s report into May’s Scottish elections is now out and broadly paints a positive picture of how the elections were administered.

As is often the case in such reports, it is the apparently obvious recommendations that highlight how something, somewhere took a rather unfortunate turn. In the case of this report, one such recommendation is tucked way unobtrusively in the middle of p.8:

Following any boundary reviews ROs and EROs must make thorough checks with the relevant Boundary Commission to ensure they are able to precisely identify the exact boundaries that are set out in legislation.

Indeed.

(700 people in Glasgow were …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged electoral commission | Leave a comment

Electoral administration lessons from the AV referendum: the Electoral Commission’s view

By Mark Pack | Published 25th October 2011 - 8:24 am

Last week, the Electoral Commission published its report into the administration of the May’s AV referendum. Despite the high political temperatures during the campaign, the administration got little criticism at the time and so the report rightly reflects that. However, amongst the details are some important pointers to issues that are likely to come up at future elections.

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Posted in Election law, News | Also tagged av referendum, electoral commission | 3 Comments

Better postal voter security amongst Government’s proposed changes to election law

By Mark Pack | Published 16th September 2011 - 1:55 pm

This week the government has put three new changes to election law out for consultation:

Ending the automatic postponement of parish and community council elections in England and Wales that currently occurs when they fall on the same day as ordinary local government elections and either a Parliamentary or European Parliamentary general election.
Mandate 100% checking of the personal identifiers for postal votes at elections (comparing the signatures and date of birth given when a postal vote is cast against the originals on file from the postal vote application). Although 100% is often recommended and done, the law only requires a

…

Posted in Election law | Also tagged proxy voting | 8 Comments

The Independent View: Is it time to rethink postal voting?

By Stuart Wilks-Heeg | Published 4th May 2011 - 11:54 am

Allegations emerged recently of voters in Rochdale being asked to hand postal ballots for the local elections to party representatives to complete and submit to the Returning Officer. A decade ago, this might have made the national news, but now such stories are probably too familiar to make the headlines.

While electoral fraud is not rife in the UK, the scale of the problem is almost impossible to estimate. One thing is for sure – the Rochdale case does not represent an isolated local difficulty. Based on joint reporting by the Electoral Commission and the Association of Chief Police Officers …

Posted in Election law, Op-eds, The Independent View | Also tagged electoral commission, rochdale, sayeeda warsi | 14 Comments

How to cast a postal vote

By Mark Pack | Published 24th April 2011 - 5:15 pm

Given the number of queries that come my way, I thought I’d try a little public information film:

Posted in Election law | 2 Comments

Who gets a postal vote in the AV referendum?

By Mark Pack | Published 14th March 2011 - 8:55 am

Any voter can apply for a postal (or proxy) vote in the usual way for May’s elections, including the AV referendum. However, people who have previously applied for a permanent postal vote may also be entitled to one without having to re-apply.

There are three categories:

1. People who have a permanent postal vote for a UK Parliamentary election – they will get a referendum postal vote too.
2. People who have a permanent postal vote for a local election and are on the register for somewhere that is holding an election in May – they will get a referendum postal vote too …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged av referendum, electoral commission | 1 Comment

AV referendum: all households to be sent a booklet explaining the vote

By Mark Pack | Published 6th December 2010 - 8:56 am

Details of how the Electoral Commission proposes to administer next May’s referendum on the voting system (provided it passes Parliament) have emerged in a series of circulars issued by the Commission last week.

Some of the details are likely to gain widespread welcome, including the extra anti-fraud step of requiring that 100% of postal votes are given extra security checks against original records (the law only requires a minimum of 20% and although many elections see 100% checking, not …

Posted in Election law, News | Also tagged av referendum, electoral commission | 9 Comments

Councillor cleared of postal vote fraud

By Mark Pack | Published 11th September 2010 - 6:29 pm

A quick update about Walsall Conservative councillor Mohammed Munir, whose suspension from the party after postal vote fraud allegations were made we previously covered. His case has now gone to court and he was found innocent.

Posted in Election law | Also tagged mohammed munir, walsall council | 3 Comments

It’s administrative blunders, not fraud, which should worry us most

By Mark Pack | Published 9th May 2010 - 9:12 pm

The problems with electoral administration ranged far wider than those which caught the headlines. Perhaps the weirdest came in one polling station in Burnley where the caretaker was getting everyone turning up to vote to sign in and out of the building “for health and safety” reasons.

More seriously, there were queues of people left wanting to vote when the polls closed at 10pm last Thursday in Birmingham, Chester, Hackney, Islington, Leeds, Lewisham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and Weybridge. (If you were a voter caught up in these problems, the Electoral Commission wants to hear from you as part of …

Posted in Election law, Online politics, Op-eds | Also tagged electoral commission | 10 Comments

Postal ballots are not the same as postal vote application forms

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd May 2010 - 2:20 pm

The Guardian today seems to confuse application forms for postal votes with the actual ballot papers that postal voters receive:

At the weekend David Monks, head of elections for the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, called for a ban on political parties handling postal votes amid fears that activists are collecting ballot papers before forwarding them on in order to record the results in their canvassing process. This breaches a national code of conduct, but is not illegal.

Activists taking postal ballot papers and then recording the voting intention from them would leave them open to legal action (e.g. undue …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged david monks, the guardian | 2 Comments

Second police investigation into publication of postal vote information

By Mark Pack | Published 2nd May 2010 - 9:20 pm

During the week Alex Foster blogged about the case of Bristol East Labour MP Kerry McCarthy who is facing a police investigation following a tweet giving voting figures from a postal vote opening.* She subsequently deleted the tweet and apologised but we await the outcome of the police investigation.

I now hear there is a second police investigation taking place, this time into a Scottish blogger who published information that was apparently supplied by the SNP based on postal vote opening in several constituencies. The post (subsequently removed) appeared on SNP Tactical Voting and made reference to three different …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged snp | 18 Comments

Electoral administration isn’t going quite as well as it should…

By Mark Pack | Published 1st May 2010 - 11:20 am

First, the good news: all the reports so far indicated a strong surge in people registering just before the deadline earlier this month. The Independent has some further figures to add to earlier reports. Thankfully, Havering Council with its hostile approach to people using the Electoral Commission’s website seems to be very much the exception. Whilst its electoral division has called “ridiculous” the number of people registering at the last moment, other councils have welcomed the surge of interest rather than criticised it.

Then the not so good news…

Allegations of postal vote fraud: the scale of the allegations, …

Posted in Election law | Also tagged electoral registration, haringey, havering council, kensington and chelsea, northern ireland, preston, tower hamlets, vale of glamorgan | 6 Comments

Postal voting under police scrutiny

By Mark Pack | Published 30th April 2010 - 4:20 pm

There have been two further recent reports of police investigations into postal vote allegations:

Police to investigate claims of postal vote fraud in council poll
… A complaint has been sent by the Conservative party to Derbyshire police about suspected fraud in the Sinfin ward in the Derby City Council local elections – which will be held on May 6, the same day as the General Election.

The complaint involves concerns that a voter was approached by men requesting her to fill in and sign three postal voting forms in favour of the Labour party… (Derby Telegraph)

Police probe ‘voting fraud’ at Bethnal

…

Posted in News | Also tagged bethnal green & bow, derby city council, rob hoveman, tower hamlets | 10 Comments

Note to agents: do not publish anything you learn at postal vote opening

By Alex Foster | Published 29th April 2010 - 4:35 pm

Twitter has come alive in the last two hours with tweets and retweets of Labour’s new media Tsarina Kerry McCarthy, who appears to have attended a postal vote opening session in her constituency of Bristol East – and then tweeted her tally totals.

Just to be clear, this is illegal. You should not do it. If you are attending postal vote processing sessions or are an agent yourself, please make sure your entire team knows that anything you learn at that session cannot be shared.

Mark Pack has the full listing of the section of the law that applies …

Posted in Election law, General Election | Also tagged kerry mccarthy, s66a rpa | 5 Comments

Postal voting: police to get tough over Code of Conduct

By Mark Pack | Published 21st March 2010 - 5:50 pm

Police forces across England and Wales are teaming up with local councils in a welcome move to encourage agents and candidates to abide by the Postal Voting Code of Conduct. They will be sending letters to agents and candidates asking them to personally sign up to the Code of Conduct.

In previous years the Code has been a national agreement negotiated by the Electoral Commission with, on the one hand, electoral administrators and, on the other, the main political parties. The involvement of both parties and administrators means the Postal Voting Code of Conduct strikes a balance between recognising the genuine …

Posted in Election law | 3 Comments

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