Wait, this can’t be right
Posted on
May 21, 2014 by
Rev. Stuart Campbell
The world's most-read Scottish politics website
-
About
Wings Over Scotland is a (mainly) Scottish political media digest and monitor, which also offers its own commentary. (More)
-
Recent Posts
- 11-18
- 11-17
- 11-12
- 11-09
- 11-06
- 11-04
- 11-03
- 11-02
- 10-29
- 10-26
- 10-26
- 10-21
- 10-19
- 10-16
- 10-13
- 10-11
- 10-10
- 10-07
- 10-06
- 10-05
A tall tale
Wee Books
Video
Probably a robbery
Transphobia
All joking aside they will have to be watched very carefully.
Vote early and vote often indeed.
Is the above leaflet kosher?
How many hundred can you get?
How small can you write?
Careful, looks like a fake to me. Turn away from the Dark Side – we can win this cleanly.
That reduced rate is rather sad…they’ll have to offer folk more cash than that I reckon.
Can I have 90 hundred as we live in the big hoose.
No 4 How many would you like ‘Hundred’?
I’ve seen a couple of examples of materials being used for attempting voter fraud at the moment – this one and a UKIP one. Is this Katy thing absolutely genuine or an in-house spoof?
I can safely say that I have never seen a general election ballot with so few options, red tory, blue tory and splittist b*stirts.
I assume you are taking the michael, how many hundred votes would you like. Still as a good Indy boy; fill it in … yes i vote labour and can i have two hundred for my extended and very fecund family. xxx a supporter of fraud.
“Careful, looks like a fake to me”
Yes, of course it is. It’s in “And Finally”.
Burns my mind
He he… another pamphlet to put in a big box with a load of household junk i have been wanting to dispose of and send away Free Post 😉
If we all print and fill in and post…this wouldnt cost Saltcoats Labour postage would it?
Aw Stu… ya teaser. 🙂
Kenny Farquharson of the Scotsman: “I’ll take 50” 🙂
The give away was the ‘Yes’ option for question 1. All the rest could easily probably be genuine.
It’s a spoof, I’m looking at a copy of the real one just now and the actual question is about volunteering to help labour’s campaign. Had me going for a second because all the other details are correct.
Sadly though the even bigger spoof is the nonsense leaflet which comes with the survey, throwing in everything from the Matchgirls Strike of 1888 to the Miners Strike as reasons not to vote for independence (she even seems to be under the impression that the miners strike was a stunning victory for the labour movement).
Cut price membership of the labour party seems to be a genuine offer…..just what I always wanted…….
The Lib Dems seem to have been written off by Labour.
damn my rellys produced hundreds for nothing if they can’t stuff a ballot what use are they?
5. Would you be interested in joining the Labour party for £5? er, naw.
Wait a minute…
throwing in everything from the Matchgirls Strike of 1888 to the Miners Strike as reasons not to vote for independence
The Labour Party wasn’t around in 1888 (or 1985 for that matter)
What next founded by Wat Tyler!
Rev, I like a joke. Where are you going with this though?
Can I have 100’s of hundreds
The Nats are a lot smarter than they were in 1979 so best be on the safe side.
Many thanks
George Cunningham
@Marcia says:
The Lib Dems seem to have been written off by Labour
I think the LibDems went into self destruct mode in 2010.
labour has historicly pulled in a large postal vote, so large in fact, that many have assumed a lack of real voters to match the votes cast. In short we have to match and impove on their strenths. I don’t mean ghost voters, but i surly mean every postal vote possible.
They’ll have to offer a lot more than a fiver for me to join.
I’m fully aware of the Labour parties ability to get out their postal vote. Although in my opinion this has obviously been achieved through canvassing.
Knocking on the doors of the elderly for example is perfectly legit, it just means we have to do the same.
We have the bigger army so why not do as we believe they do and offer people postal votes.
Spoof posters are a laugh but maybe not the best tactic. we can do better. Truth sounds better to me.
Q 5: Is that Labour’s projected figure for the minimum wage?
Did Newsnight Scotland just clear Alex Neil?
The whole site may be spoof link to katyclark.org.uk
Her “Say no to the bedroom tax” sounds great, if you have the memory of a gold fish.
link to wingsoverscotland.com
[…] Wait, this can’t be right […]
It’s not a spoof there was a previous one,which was I believe in breach of the Data Protection Act, the info would go to the Labour Club for any incumbent to pick up from behind the door.
I phone the ICO as it was Labour didn’t want to know.
Katy is great at other issues far away from her Constituency,
Still, learned that from her predecessor Brian Wilson
Here’s where I’m coming from.
We have a referendum to win and who will that for us? Most likely people like me, yes labour voters not ever SNP. We have a target and that is to convert all these Labour supporters to Yes supporters.
That can only be done I believe with positive messages, such as talking about and advertising the good work being done by Labout For Independence.
I’m sick of the crap from the NO side and do not wish to see it in any form from the Pro side. No Bullshit, just facts.
There is nothing wrong in the opinion of our brethren whether they support Yes or No, Labour or SNP. We have to convince them why Yes is the side to choose. A large majority of SNP traditional voters are for Yes already of course. Only 30% of so of traditional Labour are.
That other 70% is where the fight has to be aimed. Just my opinion.
@ Thepnr “That other 70% is where the fight has to be aimed. Just my opinion.”
So no critical stuff then as it upsets and deter possible YES voters who also vote Labour and dudes like the Flipper and Ian Davidson?
If you are still voting Labour in Scotland after what they did with three terms in Westminster, you must be very rich from stuff like PFI, you’re a City bankster, an arms manufacturer or you own that nice shop next Westminster selling ermine robs and ribbons.
@thepnr
Absolutely right. The numbers which will swing the vote on the 18th Sept are to be found in the traditional working class areas of Scotland.
All our efforts re leafleting, canvassing etc.should be directed there.
About time we had a new and high quality “Labour for Independence” leaflet to go out with the “Yes”Newspaper in appropriate areas.
link to bbc.co.uk
Newsnight Scotland from around 5 minutes in..
@heedtracker
Sorry bet you seem to be missing my point.
I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR LABOUR UNDER ITS CURRENT GUISE.
You have no idea how pissed off I am with the party I was once a member of and have supported my entire life. You can be as critical as you like and I will support you but don’t make shit up.
That is what this site does best expose the made up shit. Do you get it?
I will never vote agian for the current Labour party, tht’s why I joined Labour for Independence.
Heedtracker you have to understand exactly what I said earlier. Do you want to win this? Then persuade Labour voters to say Yes. I am every fucking day!
@thepnr
You are spot on. YES campaign take note.
@ Thepnr, its a straight forward question, I thought? Labour loyalty and no vote polls are reasonably clear.
How else do they keep getting elected.
Many years ago I got a cold telephone call from the Tories. I am ashamed to say that I lied when the asked “are you going to vote Conservative?”. He sounded so enthusiastic and was so chuffed when I said yes. I think my end game was to get them to drive me to the polls. Sad. Anyway since then I have been sent raffle tickets, asked to pre-select a candidate etc etc all of which are binned. A few weeks ago I got a letter about the referendum and asking “do I want a postal vote?” and to send a form to the Tories.
I do worry about postal votes.
“It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” Joseph Stalin.
I am sure that there must be some “Uncle Joe” fans within BT.
@heedtracker
You can only have loyalty to your own beliefs. The current Labour party have no loyalty from me. That only surfaced a year or so ago but started in with Tony Blair.
I have no loyalty whatsoever to Labour but as you well know this is not about party politics but about democracy first and foremost.
There may have been a time when you could have blindly put an X in your preferred box but that is no longer the case. I will vote Yes and if we are successful I will then support the party I best believe is in my and my childrens interests and I don’t care what colour of tie they wear.
The Grassroots Vote No campaign in action and busted as well :- link to archive.today
Glad to see it was gone on my walk through Hollyrood park last night.
Hmmm, many a word was said in jest. Who knows what the anti Indy lot have up their sleeves.
@silver19
I thought it was funny anyway. Let’s not be mistaken you will never live in these times again. Things may get heated but we will handle that.
I’m glad the Yes support is so committed, that itself makes me think we will win. A great many No’s won’t turn out. The money Ian Brotherhood stuck on over 55% is a winner. Yeah.
I love you all 🙂
Obvious fake, but on a more serious note how exactly do postal votes work?
It seems you can ask a political party to set one up for you, and clearly you receive your ballot paper through the post.
But does this return direct to the returning officer, or does it go via the party that set it up?
Sorry for the self-plug:
I’m currently doing a 1421 mile bike ride for local yes campaign groups. I’m four stages from completion and will be arriving back in Glasgow on Sunday, meeting point Velodrome at 4pm.
My Facebook page is RometoHome
My Twitter name is @indycyclist
My indiegogo fundraiser link is:link to indiegogo.com
@Heedtracker. “Ermine robs…”
Freudian slip, sir? ????
I doff my cap to whoever the satiric genius was who did that leaflet. It made me laff.
Isn’t it interesting that there’s no home grown funny in the No campaign. They only have unfunny jock jokes in the UK media. And John Barrowman and the Krankies, which is the same thing.
Thepnr, no one should support political party’s like football teams. Blind loyalty to a football team is fine… Blind loyalty to a political party is downright stupidity.
If more people understood that it is only their personal politics that are important… It is ONLY the issues that they personally believe in that count… Then at election time you select the political party (or candidate) that matches those personal beliefs as closely as possible.
What makes me angry is those who still believe Labour are Left Wing Socialist. link to politicalcompass.org
Even more maddening, those who bypass the effort of intelligent thought completely and state that they have always supported a particular party, just as their father and grandfather did!
Other than the Socialists and the RIC etc, the SNP currently are politically the closest to that ideology. Nuclear Weapons? Free Personal Care? Student Fees? Illegal Wars? Fairness and Equality?
Issue by issue… If the SNP were to ‘do a Labour’ and throw out their core beliefs, then my SNP membership would be torn up in a heartbeat. My loyalty and my vote is to my personal political beliefs, first and last.
Read you’re later post Thepnr and you went some way to saying what I said above.
Loyalty and party politics = always a bad idea
Went to her page, typed this out but didn’t have an account – can’t be bothered creating one and thought it might give her a Cybernat abuse angle as well – so posting here instead…
Vote against the tax in Westminster instead of lame excuses such as ‘pairing’.
I suppose it wasn’t really important enough to mess up the cosy little arrangements since you (Tory, Labour, Liberal) all effectively advocate the same… was going to say policies but Labour don’t have any, just a list of things which would be nice to do sometime in the future.
The only conviction your party MPs have are criminal ones, there is nothing (other than securing pay and allowances for yourselves and the people who bankroll you) that is sacred or an absolute red line for any of you.
Policy free vessels mouthing empty sound-bites.
An overabundance of career MPs with no life experience and totally disconnected from the electorate are destroying politics right across the UK.
A reliance on lack of press scrutiny and voter apathy and wait for your turn in Government due to simply not being the ‘other’ lot.
Your collusion with your supposed sworn enemies (the Tories – just in case you weren’t sure) to attack a government which operates on a fixed budget and has limited ability to alter the overall welfare and benefits system is low even by Labour standards.
People don’t automatically believe the BBC or newspapers anymore – we are capable of looking back to see who introduced policies, follow previous statements people have made & gather information from alternative sources.
The absolute lack of coherence in Labour official statements regarding the bedroom tax, allied with the fact that some of us actually have memories which go back further than the last Labour press release and U-turn means you have zero credibility on this – and pretty much anything else to be honest.
I long for the day when those who willfully mislead and misinform the electorate will actually be held to account for their duplicity and lack of integrity.
I look forward to a totally inadequate response which will play the man, miss the point and do what Labour does best and attempt to close down debate in light of having nothing substantive to say about anything.
The current Labour Party is like one big (bad) episode of Father Ted where you all go around with placards saying ‘Down with this sort of thing’ …but not actually doing anything.
…Rant over…Better do some work now…
This is my MP. She has been ‘moving to the dark side’ for some time. The address is correct, and that particular club has a reputation for dugs and rosettes! Do remember that Saltcoats also starred in that infamous youtube video (From RT) of a certain football club’s views on SNP and Alex Sammon (sic). “GSTQ she brings in 20 mullion pounds a year! Ah’ll move tae England!”
Well with a lot of the BT & Labour stuff I wouldn’t
have known it was aspoof unless you had told me.
🙁
Mr thms says
“Did Newsnight Scotland just clear Alex Neil?”
watching the part you highlighted (thanks for that) it would seem so,
The point that Alex Neil had indeed sought advice from the permanent secretary which clearly meant he had NOT exceed his brief was put to Richard Simpson
who replied
WE’LL HAVE TO CHECK THAT”
Sweet jesus is he saying they hadn’t already taken that screamingly obvious step?
So basically he needs to resign cos we say so?
This is simply not good enough, what are we paying these people for? to launch schoolyard attacks on the other gang?
Basic fact checking is the least we should expect from MSP’s otherwise the presiding officer should be taking sanctions against the offenders and the sanctions should be up to and including jail,
And the job of presiding officer should be just that ,an officer of the chamber, not an elected member so it can be clearly shown sanctions taken are not politically motivated
maybe high court judges could rotate in and out of the chair?
O/T
Car Crash.
link to newsnetscotland.com
Pay attention to the timing of who knew what and when between Darling, McDougall and our current chancellor.
dodgardiner
respec
I wish I had said that 🙂
David Smith says
“@Heedtracker. “Ermine robs…”
Freudian slip, sir? ????”
Its not a Freudian slip its a liberty bodice. 🙂
I had a conversation with an ex Labour supporter yesterday from Ayrshire who openly admitted that he used to sign lots postal vote slips for the local Labour party.
Enough said.
I delivered a number of application forms for postal votes to SNP supporters. They were pre-completed with the voter’s name and address and so on, by the computer. The accompanying letter said very clearly that if the voter wanted a postal vote they should sign the form and send it to THE RETURNING OFFICER. The address was provided. There was no question of the SNP getting its paws, grubby or otherwise, on these forms after they’d been signed.
slightly O/T
had a nice e-mail from (apparently) Chuck Kennedy this morning. In it he stated that I’d provided the Lib Dems with my e-mail address at some point (complete lie) and would I mind awfully, filling in a wee survey they’re doing.
Your starter for 10 …
Do you agree that Scotland should be IN Britain and IN Europe? answer Yes or No.
and that was it.
No follow up to clarify anything, but they then offered me the chance to fund their obfuscatory campaign, which I declined to accept.
I’ve also asked them where they got my e-mail address, which is a business account and NOT a personal one, and suggested that they might like to provide me with that answer prior to me complaining to the electoral commission – and I’ll add the Information Commissioner’s Office to that if there’s no adequate response.
Lib Dems – the party you should never, ever trust, ever again.
What is this “again” of which you speak?
@Morag
I was young (many years ago) and was seduced into their web of deceit and lies. Then, I discovered that they weren’t always as upstanding and honest as they could be. Damascene moment.
Didn’t take me long to start voting for people (NOT parties) who I thought might actually represent my views. There followed many years of disappointment from the lack of success in choosing the “winner” at many many elections.
I’m now a grizzled, old, haggard, weary, elector. Pretty much against ALL party politics. I’d like to see an iScotland ban party politics, with the death penalty for any transgressor(s).
Apart from that, pretty cool with despising the Lib Dems. 🙂
Is there any way to check if your postal vote has been altered, i have just postal voted ?
SNP by the way…
@colin young 10:40
here’s a sample set of rules I found on the good ol’ interweb:
link to electoralcommission.org.uk
Page 6 para 2.17 has a wee mention of “verification” by an “automated system”
page 16, section 5 has more details of handling the materials
and it goes on with more detail.
I will make the rash assumption that there will be a similar set of rules and procedures in place for the real event up here.
Now that the postal system has been sold and is in the hands of the forces of anti-democracy, shouldn’t we be looking at a new and less compromised method of voting?
It’s clear that we cannot trust the Westminster parties not to abuse the postal voting system in any case. I would suggest that all postal vote counts should be monitored specifically by overseas observers. It might slow things down a great deal but in light of the general lack of integrity, particularly in relation to the Labour Party I feel such measures will be necessary, especially in September.
Spoof leaflet notwithstanding, we all know that the smell of postal vote fraud seems to follow the Labour Party in Scotland around.
But, they will squeal, nothing has ever been found to be improper.
At which point you answer with, ‘aye, because no one has ever bothered checking really closely before.’
If anyone ever looks into postal votes with a forensic level of detail an awful lot of Labour members are going to start sweating like they’ve just run a marathon.
There are simply too many rumours and stories of voting fraud for them not to be true on one level or another. I do not tend to follow the saying ‘no smoke without fire’ but this is a case of ‘when there’s that much smoke, go and look for the fire just in case.’
I remember being mocked on a forum thread in 2010 for cautioning people that the LibDems were duplicitous two-faced liars and not to be trusted. Later, several people returned to the thread and remarked that I had had their number all along.
It was overwhelmingly English people who had fallen for them. I was commenting with the benefit of having observed their behaviour in Scotland over many years.
Postal Vote Fraud is a real threat. End Of!
What is the EC doing about ensuring the 100% security of Postal Votes given that there is the possibility of fraud?
(A) Does the EC accept that fraud is possible?
(B) Has the EC measures in place to combat such fraud?
(C) Exactly what are these measures?
(D) It may well be anecdotal, but would the EC and Police Scotland be interested in Postal Vote fraud if it has already taken place, if this can be verified?
(E) What specific evidence is required to instigate such an investigation?
Rev – there would appear to be a strong issue here that could well do with a much higher profile on WOS. Fraud should be recognized as a probable threat to this upcoming Referendum and it should be front and center of concerns.
According to Hansard, Katy Clark did attend the Bedroom Tax debate last November, spoke in it, and voted. She was not one of those who dodged the debate by pairing.
(That shouldn’t be taken as evidence of even a smidgen of support for her; she has sold out, but she did manage to do something right.)
@Morag
While on the topic of “improving” our electoral system, I’d make it another “punishable by death” offence to get elected and form a coalition government if that wasn’t in the “winning” party’s manifesto.
Alternatively, there should be a couple of additional compulsory (otherwise vote is binned) options to state that you are relaxed about a coalition, if that’s a post election option, or that the “winning” party MUST form a minority government and work with ALL other parties (goes completely against my anti-party belief system though). No opt out for a re-run. Fixed term, and deal with it!
@ Jim Thomson thanks for the link.
Shortly after i posted i got a call from SNP regards my vote so i informed them i voted SNP they were happy.
I asked how could i verify that my p/vote was indeed lodged as an SNP vote he did not know how to verify it.
All this smoke about p/vote shenanigans is wrong we should have a method to confirm if the p/vote lodged has been altered or not ?
The UK postal vote system seems like an open invitation to electoral fraud.
It might work if no political parties were involved in any steps of the process. What I find most disturbing is returning postal votes to party HQs, not the returning officer.
In Finland we have a system called advance voting. For about a week 1-2 weeks before actual polling day you can go to any of the hundreds of advance polling stations (libraries, schools, post offices, even shopping malls) anywhere in Finland.
You have to present photo ID (driving licence, passport, ID card), the official enters your name and social security number into the computer and hands you the ballot paper (actually an A5 card) and you go to the booth and write down your prefferred candidates number (we have an open list d’Hondt system so the voters decide the ranking inside each party list).
You return to the officer, who stamps your ballor paper, you stick in an envelope and seal it and sign a “covering letter”. The first envelope and the letter with your signature are then put into another envelope and sealed. Job done.
This of course requires a good computerised electoral roll so that once you have voted you’re immediately marked as having done so and can’t go on a tour of different advance polling stations. 😀
Last week I was in Lapland and voted in the Euro elections, the actual polling day is this Sunday. On actual polling day you have to go to your local assigned polling station where the process is the same except for the envelopes and signatures (i.e. you need photo ID to vote).
Organising this type of voting probably costs more than postal voting but it seems more fraud-proof to me.
Oh, and if you absolutely cannot get to an advanced polling station or the actual polling station (e.g. you’re in hospital), there are arrangements for the election officials (NOT party people) to come to you.
Jim Thomson @ 11.51am
While on the topic of “improving” our electoral system, I’d make it another “punishable by death” offence to get elected and form a coalition government if that wasn’t in the “winning” party’s manifesto.
I suppose you’re thinking of the FPTP Westminster system here?
Holyrood has roughly proportional representation (PR) because the list MSPs correct the constituency (FPTP) MSP numbers to roughly reflect the popular vote.
It’s an inherent feature of PR systems that almost all governments are coalitions. The current situation in Holyrood is very unusual indeed. Usually no party can have an outright majority of seats.
Finnish voters know this so expect all governments to be coalitions, it’s an accepted fact. We have more political parties represented in Parliament and governments are usually coalitions of 4-6 parties, with the leader of the biggest party becoming PM, the leader of the 2nd biggest the Chancellor and the rest divvied up among all the coalition parties according to size. For example, the small-to-medium-sized Greens have been in government in Finland, usually given the environment portfolio.
It’s a question of different political culture. PR is so new in the UK that people – even those who support PR – tend to think in the FPTP mould.
Of course, if you’re opposed to political parties on principle, this kind of PR party political system isn’t acceptable either, 😉 but then you have the problem of forming governments out of hundreds of independent MPs who can hold wildly varying stancens on all kinds of things. (Think of herding cats.)
Political parties bring some coherence into this. Each party has – or should have – defined policies on all the major issues so voters know what kind of things they’ll try to promote in coalition goverments.
Parties like Labour and LibDems, who say one thing to the voters and then pursue exact opposite policies of course contribute to the low level of trust politicians enjoy in the UK. The Tories, at least, are fairly honest about how nasty they will be.
@lumilumi
dammit – I’d just spent ages constructing a phenomenally intricate piece of prose in response to your post at 2:24 and I hit some unfathomable combination of keys by mistake, ended up on some other WoS screen and … suffice to say it all evaporated 🙁
Essentially, I’ve been a keen user of polling stations for over 40 years and have an inkling of how the systems operate ;-). I can only dream of a utopian alternative to the FPTP party political fudge we don’t enjoy. The dizzying array of PR alternatives just makes the brain hurt.
I think the only way you should be entitled to a postal vote is to be disabled. If you are too lazy then you lose the vote. If you are going to be out of the country at the time of the vote you should have to attend the local Police Station with identification and be allowed to vote early. I seem to remember that you had to apply for a postal vote when they first came out, now the forms are available like confetti. We got postal voting forms from the SNP, sorry as we did not want them they were shredded, I cannot confirm therefore that what Marcia says is right or wrong though I am sure she is correct. The problem is that as in the Leslie Roy victory in Glenrothes the Postal Votes could not be found. This election should have been rerun because of that alone. We should all be aware of the dishonesty found in several part of England with Postal Voting.
@lumilumi, you make many good points with regard to coalitions which are quite normal on the Continent. Can you in truth see Labour or the Lib Dems or the Tories working with the SNP. We all know what happened and thank god for that in 2007. The hatred has just got worse and worse. Labour regard the SNP as having stolen their electorate and their position which was never supposed to end for them.
@ Helena Brown above
It just goes to show that even with PR Holyrood Labour etc. think in terms of the Westminster FPTP political culture.
FPTP is essentially a two-party system, adversial and confrontational. Look at the layout of the HoC or HoL and compare it with Holyrood (and many many other parliaments around the world), which was deliberately designed as a semi-circle.
Political culture and the mindset of voters only changes slowly but I’m sure that once independent and not tied down by the antiquated Westminster system Scottish voters will “progress” surprisingly fast. I’m not sure about some politicians, though…
Jim Thomson @ 3.31pm
What a shame, it would’ve been interesting to read your thoughts.
I think the open list d’Hondt system used for council, parliamentary and EU elections in Finland is fairly good though not perfect. It still gives a slight advantage to bigger parties.
One thing I’d like to change would be having the candidates in randomised order, not alphabetically.
It’s a lot easier to understand than the STV system. All the voting data is published the next day and you can replicate the results (=seats won by each party) with pen and paper (OK, maybe with a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet). We were taught this basic pshephology in school. 🙂
Of course this system produces strange quirks, too. There was this Green politician who was very popular nationally and also in her constituency (or electoral region) but the Greens in general weren’t very popular in that region. She got a massive amount of personal votes (the most in that constituency, I think) but the others in the Green party list got very few, so her list’s total was too low and candidates with lower personal vote counts but from party lists with higher overall support in that region swished past her, and she lost her seat.
Well, that’s the PR d’Hondt method for you and you just have to grin and bear it – PR (as opposed to FPTP) also helps smaller parties to win seats so all in all it’s a fairly good system.
Surely question 4 should have stated thousands and not hundreds? Sack the idiot immediately 3:)
I have been a postal voter for several years due to the fact that I used to work offshore and have already sent off my MEP form (SNP of course – would love to vote Green but we NEED to win this referendum first) last week. But I have decided that I want to physically vote in person this referendum so have asked to have my postal vote withdrawn.
This alleged postal vote fraud business worries me and this is pretty much the first time I have heard about it. Can someone please spell out what exactly is thought to be going on? Or put up some links to where I can find some info. Ta.
link to arewebettertogetherscotland.wordpress.com
Concern about vote fraud has been rumbling about in the back of my brain for a while now and – it’s a shame to have to say it – but I don’t trust the system to deliver us an accurate and honest result in September. Whatever the result, we have to be able to trust that the result is honest and accurate, but how can we guarantee that?
Whether it was a spoof or not, the UKIP “how to win elections in Oldham” thing is do-able, and if it’s do-able, what’s to stop people from using those kinds of tactics if there aren’t checks and balances in place to stop it.
Was very interested in your posts, lumilumi, about the Finnish system. In an independent Scotland we’d have the freedom to overhaul the voting system, but we need to win that prize first and I just don’t feel reassured by the current arrangements.
There should be independent monitors from overseas in order to safeguard the postal votes.Listening to the lengths their going to in terms of misinformation & lying. The Unionists cannot be trusted one inch.
Why not just ask for 10,000 hundred and burn them all?
The real joke about the real version of this material pushed through letter boxes in Katy Clarks constituency is that inside it refers to the Tolpuddle Martyrs (1834), the matchstick girls strike (No pun intended, 1888), Bevan, Hardie and continues at length clutching at straws in a desperate attempt to grab any credibility. I wrote to Katy Clark complaining about this material as it doesnt have one positive thing to say about Scotland only “we will lose jobs in ammunition factories” “who would have saved the RBS” and well all the other nonsense that we have heard a thousand times before. Katy is usually better than this.
lumilumi says: Sorry only just read your reply to me, yes I think that this is the trouble if Westminster had PR then we would see the advent of smaller parties getting a look in. Look how long it has taken the SNP to get anywhere and it has still not cracked Westminster Elections, though perhaps that is on the whole a good thing. I see that on the Continent that small parties all participate in Politics and in Government. Not being over fond of the Tories I still say it is better that all points of view are represented in Holyrood and hope that in 2016 we see members of the SSP there as well as more green members.