To think that your vote isn't actually secret?

[hellooooooomama]

Everyone has voted by now so hopefully won't put anyone off.

I watched very carefully while voting today. There is a number next to your name on a list, they write that number on a sheet next to the number of the ballot paper they give you.

How the hell is that a secret vote?!

I think the concern is that where you have unscrupulous governments, the ability to trace what people voted for, is potentially dangerous and therefore should be completely anonymous.

But don't you see, this process also protects you from unscrupulous governments inserting fake votes for example. I think the idea is that if there ever was a serious issue concerning vote-rigging or similar, court-ordered officials would technically be able to audit the ballots from each polling station and confirm that every ballot in the box can be traced back to an individual.

I want to know why no-one is concerned about the fact that you can just stroll in with no ID and no polling card and tell me an address and I let you vote. That, to me, is a much more of an issue.

Of course you should have to prove ID and be ticked off list of eligible voters but maybe the voting slip should have no identifiable number on it, so vote is truly secret.
I get that this could in theory open up the possibility of the voting box being swapped with one more appealing to an unscrupulous govt - no system is perfect. I guess it comes down to what you think is most important, secrecy or complete prevention of fraud.

mmm, last election, a few weeks later I received a letter from the party that I voted for addressed to me personally stating "thank you for your vote"

So I think the parties do know who has voted for who

CypriotDonkey I think it's just an educated guess/coincidence. After the last election we got letters saying thank you for vote but neither me or DH had voted for that party. Said party is heavily supported in our local area though.

The procedure for checking that votes are valid also needs to be public & transparent.

I was counting votes last night. It's a public event. Good to go watch & see all the procedures before you think there's a Cat's chance in Hell of linking vote choices to individuals. Maybe if you can recognise handwriting, like the person who wrote "Two pints of milk, please" across his ballot last night.

Maybe if you can recognise handwriting, like the person who wrote "Two pints of milk, please" across his ballot last night

But it wasn't delivered today...

Are postal votes only opened on election day? They could be used to see who voted as you put your name on but this is in the outside envelope though.

They are processed as they are received (which involves a lot more work than you might think but includes checking validity of the signature/date of birth and removing invalid ones) and the ballot papers are then placed in ballot boxes to be taken to the count on the day. The ballot paper envelopes are not opened until the statements (with the names/addresses on) have been removed.

Sometimes voters don't follow the instructions that come with their postal vote e.g. put the ballot paper and the statement in the same envelope and in that case the postal vote opener will be very careful to keep the ballot paper face down as they separate it from the statement and place it in an envelope. Throughout the whole postal vote opening process the ballot papers are kept faced down and no one looks who the votes have been cast for until the night of the count.

I don't know if it is a rule across the whole country but where I work, we cover several different constituencies/wards. Each constituency is processed by a different team and no one is allowed to be on the postal vote processing team for the area they live in, which reduces the chance of you seeing the name of someone you know (although, even if you did, you would only see that they had voted, not who they had voted for).

CypriotDonkey yes it's an educated guess. The electoral roll data tells the parties that you have voted, but obviously not who you voted for. If you have ever told a campaigner your voting intention they will hazard a guess that you voted for them (what's called a voting promise). The data that canvassers see when they are canvassing if basically a combination of knowing that you have voted and guesswork about whether you've voted for their own party. They may combine this by looking at the projected voting profile of people in your postcode to see if you are in a target voting sector of the population.

So if I'm canvassing in a street, the data that I have about each household includes the names of who's on the electoral roll, whether they have voted in the last few elections, and a guess about their party affiliation based on their answers to canvassers in the last few elections. So we'll be able to see, for example, if you always promise to vote Labour when doorstopped, but you don't actually vote in the end. You'll get less heavily targeted marketing than people who tell us they will vote for Labour and are recorded on the roll as having voted. In the latter case, canvassers will assume your vote is a "promise", and if you haven't been recorded as having voted by later on election day you may get a knock-up from a "get out the vote" campaigner.

Obviously nothing is stopping you from saying you'll definitely vote for a party (and thus becoming one of their "promises"), but actually voting a different way in the ballot box. Local campaigners for all parties always have tales of voters who promise to vote for every party - and get multiple cars arriving for them from every party, ready to take them to the polling station late on election day!

To all the people saying the counters cant change your vote have a watch of this.

twitter.com/JOHNROB79/status/746103773806862337

lol @MyOtherNameIsTaken.

@Drawward -- I watched the video. What did you see that I didn't? The lady had a pencil in her hand while her colleague watched, she wrote something down on something.

We SIGN little total count sheets to verify we have counted in groups of 20 or 100. It makes us responsible for accuracy & helps us keep track of what has been double counted and any odd numbers, like a bundle of 63 (we need to write down it's 63 or whatever, that is not the standard bundle of 100). Sometimes the double counting is with the gals at other end of the table (I 2nd count theirs & they 2nd count mine). Usually the counting agents are 5 inches away so even if my colleagues colluded with me to ignore me rubbing someone else's vote out and putting a new X in, I'd be caught by the counting agent & all the other Party Reps trying to do crap like that.

Most the counters work for district & county council, I have found. So we have a vested interest in keeping our job, not changing the odd vote .

So far I have only counted votes for wards far(ish, away) from where I live, so even less likely I'd be able to somehow Identify someone's vote.

Plus... even if everyone was conspiring & no-one was watching... we have thousands of votes to get thru. I don't want to brainstorm how to commit any fraud, but if I did want to commit election fraud, there are probably much more efficient or successful ways than during the actual count itself.

It's highly unlikely she's changing a ballot paper - for starters they aren't working fast enough! Also, they have personal notepaper in front of them where they mark down and verify number of ballots in a pile. They both then have to initial it so they'd both have to be 'in on it' if they were doctoring figures.

I was a counting agent at the local election last month. There were agents and representatives for every candidate and we watched like hawks, close enough to see each ballot clearly. The chances of doing anything dodgy in that environment are negligible.

re the video, I had to read the comments to figure out that people thought she was rubbing something out.

I thought that was counting fast followed by smoothing the paper out.

We don't see what she did before she rubbed out (or smoothed, whatever).

If rubbing something out, I imagine she was double counting & found the count was wrong. Instead of a bundle of 15 it was a bundle of 17, or whatever. Having checked several times, on the top sheet she rubbed 15 out & wrote 17 to correct. Her colleague watched the whole time.

Need to see the previous 30 - 120 seconds to confirm.

The idea of rubbing hundreds of votes out in a public setting with a billion observers & then putting distinct crosses somewhere else ... pfwah... ha!

Regarding the stubby pencils - DH pointed out to DS that unlike pens, pencils tend not to run out. You may have to sharpen them, but they won't run out mid X, or splutter ink all over the ballot paper!

The thing that puzzles me most is the fact that you don't have to identify yourself at the polling station. So say I am friends with my neighbours and they tell me they won't vote I can go and pretend I'm them and vote on their behalf.

As to the "thank you for voting for my party" letters, just got an email from Lib Dems thanking me for my vote. I didn't vote Lib Dems but I am on their database as I subscribed to their communication (and other parties as well). So it is just a guess.

I did a count once and once only because I hated all the people looking over my shoulder at what I was doing.

I think that's a very selectively edited video. Show us the rest of it for context and I think a different picture would emerge.

Well, yes, Fleurdelise, and that exact thing happened to DB (not this year but last time): he got to the polling station to be told that he had already voted.

Apparently his vote was placed separately in a sealed envelope (or box, or something) until the end of the count. I'm not sure how that helps anyone know that he hadn't voted twice, and we never heard how it was resolved.

With regard to ID, in Northern Ireland I refer you to

www.eoni.org.uk/Electoral-Identity-Card/Electoral-Identity-Card-FAQs

The following documents are accepted at polling stations as proof of identity:
A UK, Irish or EEA driving licence (photographic part) (provisional accepted)

A UK, Irish or EU passport (note: EU passports are not accepted at UK Parliamentary elections)

An Electoral Identity Card

A Translink Senior SmartPass

A Translink 60+ SmartPass

A Translink War Disabled SmartPass

A Translink Blind Person’s SmartPass

These documents are listed in legislation and no other forms of identity can be accepted.

The identification document does not need to be current, but the photograph must be of a good enough likeness to allow polling station staff to confirm the identity of the holder.

Don't you lads across the channel check ID!?

CypriotDonkey

They don't and can't know how you voted. As others have said they do invest in market research data and can make an educated guess about how they voted. Say for example, you know that I live in an urban area, work in the public sector, went to university and am in my 30s, I have a direct debit to Amnesty international, am an enthusiastic cyclist and my shopping basket usually contains hummus and a copy of the Guardian, it doesn't take a bloody genius to work out that I am not likely to be a UKIP voter or a Tory voter, does it?

Im a presiding officer also and can reiterate whst my colleagues (most likely from other areas) say. Also the register of electors is sealed in one packet and handed over when we deliver the box. This packet is seperated and does not go into the count but back to the election office where it is securely stored. . The corresponding number list is sealed onto a black rubbish sack with things like pens, staionery spare notices unused envelopes etc. This bag is stored along all the other black sacks and well after the election may be opened in the stores to retrieve anything that can be reused.( such as large pvc polling station signs ) The rest is disposed of/ shredded. The corresponding number list can only be opened by court order. If there is doubt of vote .

Let me point you to Opt2vote, now owned by IDOX.

Scottish local elections- 2017

Once again the local elections were counted electronically, using the same system used in 2012. The tender was awarded to CGI (formerly Logica) and Idox Elections (formerly Opt2vote), both of which delivered the 2012 elections successfully.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_local_elections,_2017

All done with industrial scale scanners and lots of hard work (Did some work for them about 5 years ago)

The ID thing - on mainland Britain you can just walk in, give an address and get a ballot paper. This has always puzzled me. However, yesterday both my PO and myself clocked an elderly lady coming in for a second time before she even spoke to us (she had forgotten she'd been in ) so we do remember faces and the people who have already voted. I think this is one of the reasons we have to be there from start to finish. However, no-one would know you at a neighbouring station.

There are processes in place for where someone comes in and a vote has already been recorded, similarly, there is a process for if I as a Presiding Officer have reason to believe the person asking to vote is not the person registered at the address quoted. But I don't know what happens to those votes at the count -how they validate them for example.

user no, you just say your name and address and are given your ballot paper. If I remember right at one point they wanted your polling card but they don't need to see that anymore.

Lancelottie that's mind blowing. Shame your DB didn't follow up on it to know what happened.

It is amazing that in the age of technology we're still using a pencil and paper without any form of id.

Oh and when we do the count each box is verified to have the correct number of votes that we pos have said it does. Then the whole lot is sorted into party categories and bundled up into 100s then we count _ usually twice each and then again to verify the boxes another team has counted. We have candidates lierally hanging over us as we do this as every vote counts. Believe me even if we wanted to change a vote we couldnt and with 1000s of papers to count we just want to get it done!

I have only received one piece of personalised mail from candidates - it came this time and was addressed to me and my eldest daughter. As she isn't yet 18 and has therefore never voted I can only assume that the information was taken from the Electoral Roll rather than some form of analysing ballot papers.
My friend was working at the count last night and described the very lengthy process of checks and double checks - no way would she have been able to sit there and rub out the crosses etc. She was one of the lucky ones and got home at 3am (no recounts).