Electorial Voting changes to save money?.

News 30 10 2009: Fury over election voting plan. In the need to cut Public expenditure the Treasury has enlisted help from the Ministry of Justice in identifying where potential savings can be made to slash some £65 million from the cost of running elections. Such possibilities include the abandonment of Polling cards in favour of Electronic means as well as reducing staffing levels and security. John Turner, of the Association of Electoral Administrators, told the Times: "There is a real danger that despite years of trying to get the voter to engage, the Government is doing the opposite.". Ken Ritchie, of the Electoral Reform Society, said: "The health of the democratic process is more important than saving peanuts. We risk turning an economic recession into a political one."

 

Opinion: Given the BILLIONS in Public money spent by Labour along with its sleeze, spin, lies, corruption, meddling and failures all resulting in lower standards, chaos, bewilderment, injustice and disrespect one would have thought that a price tag of £65 million to get rid of Labour would be good “value for money” but saying that Elections are about a day at the races where one must back a horse running around the same old “track”.

Someone once said that through computer technology we would have paperless offices but nothing was said about ordinary people having to carry that paper around with them in order to prove their identity!. Of course New Labour called for the introduction of National Identity cards subsequent to which Gov Departmental plumbing began leaking data (losses) -add to that passport fraud/theft in 2007/2008 one doesn’t really know whose who anymore!.

Good isn’t it how the current Gov look towards sanctioning changes in the rules on Voting especially given the 2005 accusations by Richard Mawrey, QC of the Labour Party seeking to delay the Birmingham trials into alleged postal vote rigging until after the General Election!. 

The REAL issues are not simply about voting but about the degradation of a Country whose Helmsman be steering a course mapped offshore.   

 

OLD News: <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />UK voting system

05 04 2005 Labour election fraud. Vote-riggers exploited weaknesses in the postal voting system to steal thousands of ballot papers and mark them for Labour, helping the party to take first place in elections to Birmingham City Council. The Birmingham vote- riggers were more cunning than the flamboyant Sir Tankerville. They coldly exploited communities where many cannot speak English or write their names. Proof that votes were stolen came when Richard Mawrey, QC, the election commissioner, ordered ballot boxes to be unsealed. Unknown to most voters, ballot papers can be traced back to individuals through serial numbers. The judge was struck by how many had been amended, sometimes using correction fluid.

HOW THE STORY EMERGED

June 9, 2004 The Times uncovers widespread intimidation and postal voting fraud in local elections

June 11 allegations of postal vote fraud in Birmingham first surface

June 25 the Government defies advice from the Electoral Commission and says that it will press ahead with all postal ballots for three referendums on regional assemblies

July 23 Tony Blair decides to abandon referendums in two regions after postal vote fears

August 26 the Electoral Commission publishes a damning report that calls for all-postal voting to be scrapped

December 10 Ministers agree to tighten the law to guard against safeguards but says that all-postal voting should go ahead.

February 22, 2005 Richard Mawrey, QC, accuses the Labour Party of seeking to delay the Birmingham trials into alleged postal vote rigging until after the general election

March 23 Mr Mawrey says that Britain’s electoral system is now and open invitation to fraud

April 4 Mr Mawrey found six Labour councillors guilty of fraud.

28 04 2008 UK voting system 'open to fraud'. A report by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust suggests that the UK's voting system is vulnerable to large-scale fraud and is being undermined by political parties' spending on marginal seats, a report has warned. Its report: Purity of Elections in the UK: Causes for Concern calls for all voters to produce photographic ID, "robust" systems for monitoring postal and proxy votes and restrictions on campaign spending by parties at constituency level. It says that elections in the UK fall short of international standards and claims the Government has failed to improve public confidence in elections. There have been at least 42 convictions for electoral fraud in the UK in the last seven years, and there is a "genuine risk" of electoral integrity being threatened. In terms of funding, there is "substantial evidence to suggest that money can have a powerful impact on the outcome of general elections, particularly where targeted at marginal constituencies over sustained periods of time." Report author Stuart Wilks-Heeg said: "It's very concerning that ministers tend to focus on 'quick fixes' to solve declining turnout and ignore genuine concerns about how easy it can be to cheat the system.

17 05 2008 Children - voted in by-election. A spokeswoman for Cambridgeshire police said: "We can confirm an allegation of electoral fraud in recent local elections in St Neots has been referred to police by Huntingdonshire District Council and is being investigated." It is alleged the youngsters voted after mistakenly being sent polling cards.

19 03 2008 UK postal vote system 'not fit for purpose'. Election commissioner Richard Mawrey QC made the comment as he described postal voting on demand as "lethal to the democratic process", and said the current system means "wholesale electoral fraud is both easy and profitable". Mawrey was commenting as he found Tory councillor Eshaq Khan guilty of adding hundreds of fake names to the electoral register. Khan was banned from holding public office for five years and lost his Slough council seat. He said the only reason the fakery came to light was because of incompetence and the blatant nature of the fraud. Extra checks on postal vote registration were included in the 2006 Electoral Administration Act, but Mawrey said the situation had in fact changed little. The Electoral Commission supports fundamental reform of the UK's election laws, before it will even consider the possibility of innovations such as e-voting.

 

Old News - Maladministration

20 03 2007 LOSS – some 10,000 passports go to fraudsters. Thousands of people have obtained passports under false pretences, the Home Office has admitted.

21 11 2007: LOSS - Computer discs missing holding sensitive personal data on some 25 million people and some 7.25 million families along with the identities of hundreds of people in witness protection programmes.

06 12 2007 LOSS - BANKING INFORMATION. HMRC admits seven security breaches.

06 12 2007 LOSS – BANK ACCOUNT DETAILS of every child benefit claimant in the country including names, addresses, birth dates, national insurance numbers Chancellor Alistair Darling reveals. £20,000 reward!

09 12 2007COMPUTER DISC SECURITY WARNING IN 2004: News of the World reveals that in March 2004 such worries were highlighted in a letter circulated by Treasury risk manager. Because no one took any action we now face a situation where millions of bank account details and information about all our children has been lost.

12 12 2007 LOSS - DRIVER DETAILS. A total of 7,685 vehicle-keepers' addresses, names and car particulars were lost at a Parcelforce sorting centre in Coventry after the Driver and Vehicle Agency in Coleraine posted two uncoded discs to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing offices in Swansea, Wales.

19 12 2007 LOSS - Pensions data by HMRC. HM Revenue and Customs has become embroiled in another data scandal after it emerged that it lost personal details of 6,000 private pension holders.

27 12 2007 FOUND - COMPUTER DISC FOUND AT A DUMP.

01 03 2008 FOUND - COMPUTER DISC on eBay laptop. A highly confidential Home Office disc has been found on a laptop computer sold on eBay.

10 03 2008 FAILURE - Data protection. The Government have failed to implement basic data protection policies, despite recent embarrassments caused by information breaches, research has showed.

15 06 2008 FOUND - SECRET FILES ON A TRAIN. A further batch of secret Government files have been found on a train. The latest confidential files were said to include details of how trade and banking systems could be manipulated to finance illicit weapons of mass destruction in Iran.

29 07 2008 LOSS - BLANK PASSPORTS STOLEN FROM VAN. The Foreign Office admitted a serious breach of security took place after blank passports destined for British embassies were stolen.

16 09 2008 LOSS - Details of 18,000 NHS staff missing. The personal details of nearly 18,000 NHS staff in London have gone missing in the post.

27 9 2008 LOSS - Files on RAF staff stolen from base: Thieves have stolen files containing the personal records of thousands of serving and former RAF staff, the Ministry of Defence said.

02 11 2008 LOSS - Government data stick found at pub. An inquiry is under way after a memory stick with user names and passwords for a government computer system was discovered in a pub car park

 

OLD News: Labour – SECRET DONATIONS

30 11 2007 Poll woe for Brown as police start funding probe. London's Metropolitan Police is set to begin its investigation into secret donations to the Labour Party on Friday as a poll suggested the scandal was hurting Prime Minister Gordon Brown's popularity. It comes after the relevation that some 600,000 pounds has been paid to Labour through intermediaries. A donor said that he didn’t realise that using middlemen in donating to Labour was against the Law!. Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman has said she acted in "good faith" in accepting some 5,000-pound from a known donor’s go-between!.  On Wednesday, Work and Pensions Secretary Peter Hain admitted he had failed to register a donation of some 5,000 pounds from Labour's chief fundraiser because of an administrative error.

06 12 2007 New Labour donations allegations. Labour is facing fresh pressure over disguised donations after it was reported party officials had helped draw up legal agreements underpinning the practice in 2003. Mr “X” (a huge donor) suggested at the weekend that about 10 party figures were aware of the practice - renewing speculation about who knew within Labour. Labour general secretary Peter Watt quit last week after admitting he was aware of the system being used - but insisted he believed it did not breach funding laws. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has denied any knowledge of the use of proxies and launched an internal inquiry into why some £650,000 of donations were "not lawfully declared".

08 12 2007 Labour took funding rules grant. Taxpayers funded the Labour Party by more than £180,000 to train party officials in new funding rules, it has been disclosed. The money was received shortly before the party began taking "disguised" gifts from a millionaire businessman. The party received a "start up grant" from the electoral commission to help it abide by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 (PPER) - which the Labour Government had introduced. All of this was to ensure that officials understood the regulations on submitting accounts and declaring donations above £5,000. The Act provided a training kitty of some £700,000 from the taxpayer which was to be divided up between all political parties on the basis of how many votes they garnered at the 1997 General Election and 1999 European Elections. The party's general secretary, Peter Watt, resigned last month after admitting that he was aware of the practice - described by Prime Minister Gordon Brown as unlawful - and a police investigation has been launched.