Was your Reform candidate a fake?

[noblegiraffe]

We know that the election was called unexpectedly and that small parties had to rush around last minute to find people to stand in all the constituencies. We know that Reform had problems with (lack of) vetting and some of theirs had to be dropped mid-campaign due to being problematic.

I saw a couple of amusing videos on twitter about someone worried that their Glaswegian Reform candidate Helen Burns didn't actually exist
https://x.com/kbfilms92/status/1808772750938448124?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g
https://x.com/kbfilms92/status/1808857245456773492?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

This morning I see that the North Northumberland Reform candidate Katherine Hales was suspiciously absent from all proceedings.

https://x.com/josiahmortimer/status/1809583328049168541?s=61&t=U9XrcF693-JpMxeIueYG7g

Clifford Ronald Thomas Bond in York Central also had no photos and the same generic leaflet as Helen Burns.

Helen Burns got 1655 votes, Katherine Hales got 7688 votes, Cliff Bond got 4721 votes. These start stacking up when you are talking about vote share and they're not the only missing candidates.

Did your Reform candidate appear to be a real person standing for election? Are there rules requiring people standing for election to actually do anything apart from be a name on paper? It seems suspicious, particularly if that party is now banging on about their vote share, if it came via dodgy means.

That is a thought.

Alan Hope - Howling Laud Hope - is definitely real
He is a Town Councillor in Fleet and runs a pub - I've met him.
BUT
He ALWAYS turns up at the count and LOVES to get his face on the telly

Helen Burns was Jane Eyre's friend who died of TB. A good Christian girl.

Yep, ours was pulled by Reform for being racist so effectively was running as an independent but approx 6,000 people voted for him thinking he was Reform because it would too late to update the ballot paper. Our local conservative MP who I think is pretty good lost by 2,000, probably mainly missing votes from people who voted for what they thought was Reform.

Sorry misunderstood - mine was actually a real person just no longer a Reform candidate.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01663/
More about the short money opposition parties get. As they only got 5 seats the money they will get is capped at about £350k. Another seat and they would have over £1M. Suspect the candidates were real; they surely wouldn't be so stupid as to commit large scale fraud?

@IThinkAdversePossessionApplies

i think most reform votes were Tory protest votes so will go back to voting Tory next time

The Reform vote was very close to the UKIP vote in 2015 and that certainly wasn’t a Tory protest vote. These are the voter who voted for UKIP plus a few who have fallen down the internet conspiracy black hole who have replaced the racists who died. Our candidate was quoting Professor Heneghan on Covid, even Professor Heneghan has deleted all the tweets that show how wrong he was. Our candidate was the full package, anti vax, anti lockdown, climate denier and Putin supporter and observers noted when they emptied the ballot boxes that many of his crosses were in black felt pen, to foil the dastardly MI5 and their plot to rub out all the pencil votes for Reform…… To be fair to Tory voters they are not normally that batshit

Oof, had not fully dived into that one

What would happen if a 6th MP defected to Reform as Lee Anderson did. Do they then get the 1M?

Is a candidate real if they provide a fake name and no candidate details and only generic party details? That doesn't feel real.

This shows how people voted in 2019 v 2024. I'm finding the table harder to read.

x.com/JamesKanag/status/1809906698385002988?t=yltUaWhRWS15Z8xqPDfhzw&s=19

I don't know the answer. Only recently found out about this money but it seems to provide an incentive for a party to get as many votes as possible to increase their share of the money. There are also votes for candidates who were kicked out but still appeared on the ballot paper. I would hope those don't count.

Unfortunately my Reform candidate- Harwich and North Essex does exist. Fortunately though, he didn’t win or even come near.

Not, I suspect, if there's a leader from an ethnic minority at the helm (likely if it's between badenoch, braverman, cleverly...)

I'd be interested to know how much of a factor Rishi Sunak's ethnicity was in the election. I'd imagine quite a few reform voters are basically signed up to Enoch Powell principles.

Ooh, that's a tasty fact.

They got away with fraud in the Brexit campaign, once the result is declared, it's not unpicked, is it?

Mine wasn't even from the same county, let alone the same constituency. I raised my eyebrows that that was even allowed at first but then realised it's likely because no one actually local to me wanted to run for such bullshit and that made me feel better. No idea if they're real or not, but being from a small town in a smaller county I could well believe they weren't.

Re the money, they did put real people in seats they thought they had a chance of winning, presumably.

From Private Eye

https://x.com/PrivateEyeNews/status/1810327043827249452

Here's our story from last week's edition about Mark Matlock, the Reform party candidate people are speculating doesn't exist. He's only partly AI-generated, it turned out. Stay ahead, buy the Eye!

I gather from Twitter that two of Mark Matlock's proposers also appear to be very dead...

The Electoral Reform Commission says it isn't their job to look into <checks notes> election fraud.

I am preening as I seem to be the only person in the whole universe who spotted Helen Burns also nominating people. I wonder if there are actually only about 10 people in Reform.

Mine is real, I saw them at the hustings. Did sound a bit like a robot though, when reading out their statement.

This was their response on the BylinesTimes twitter thread

There was a candidate in our area but he didn’t canvas. Just looked him up on LinkedIn and Companies House. He seems to be the CEO of a very unsuccessful aviation company. That or is fucking over the tax man.

I gather from Twitter that two of Mark Matlock's proposers also appear to be very dead...

He just posted this on twitter

I appreciate what you are saying and I promise you a video will be coming out explaining all. I am real and I am also suffering with pneumonia. Please give me 5 days and all will be proven. Thank you for voting Reform.

https://x.com/vote4MarkReform/status/1810330951920259207

And this is another one...

https://aijourn.com/profile/JoelSkipper/?tab=main

Look at what he does!!