Poling Day, 6.5.2021.

[paulfromcamden]

You are entitled to vote even if you cannot read in the UK.
Quite right too.

Though you'll soon need photo ID. Despite there being virtually no documented cases of voting fraud that this would prevent.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/may/10/queens-speech-photo-id-future-elections-social-care

 

[paulfromcamden]

P.S. I think if you're a UK resident and paying tax you should get a vote too.

 

[Sue Pertwee-Tyr]

Record number of rejected London Mayoral ballots.

I'm not surprised. Voters had a first and second choice and the form had two columns - half the names in one column and half in the other. 114,000 people thought the second column was for their second choice.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-57049779

Hmm, I know your comment was meant in jest (wasn't it?) but it is incumbent on the voting authorities to ensure universal suffrage. If that means writing stuff in crayon, so be it.

If we're to hope that PR might come along at some point, ballot papers will generally get a bit more complicated. So people will need to have this explained to them.

But actually, that post from Paul sounds more like a design flaw. A bit like putting the ejector seat button next to the intercom button, bad design invites disaster; you should design a ballot paper to be easily and quickly understood (nobody lingers in the ballot box, do they?), and virtually impossible to mess up inadvertently. It's not beyond the wit of man to do that, so if it failed here, that's on those who laid the ballot paper out.

 

[SteveG]

If we're to hope that PR might come along at some point, ballot papers will generally get a bit more complicated. So people will need to have this explained to them.

In the system used in Scotland there is a higher number of rejected papers on the list vote, but it's not particularly high IMHO. There is a potential issue that there can be 20 or more parties (and independents) on those lists though (my daughter had 22 on her voting slip in the Glasgow region, and here in Lothian we had 19) and that can be a problem in a couple of ways:

• If you hadn't done your research then the party names don't always tell you much about what the party in question stands for (and yes, it's best if people do at least basic research before putting their cross against a party)
• Some of the party names can be pretty similar, perhaps deliberately so. For example a Liberal party that's anything but or an Independent Green Voice party which appears to be the BNP in disguise. It's entirely possible that the list votes for those parties were actually intended for the LibDem's or the Greens.

 

[kensalriser]

Voter ID is another strategy inspired by the anti-democratic Republican party. But given the disproportionate Tory vote among older people I wonder if it will backfire.