Tag: voting

Proposed trials of voting via internet or text message in next year’s local council elections have been scrapped by the government. (Via Risks Digest)

Just occasionally the government trips over reality and notices. It’s also encouraging that Opposition spokesman Oliver Heald was, firstly, able to dig this out, and secondly, correctly said that “Remote electronic voting is even more vulnerable than all-postal voting.” The reference to the vulnerability of large-scale postal voting strongly suggests that he understands the issues.

We’re not completely out of the woods – a Department of Constitional Affairs spokesman has said “We are not ruling out piloting e-voting in the future and any future plans will be taken forward at the appropriate time.” I hope that’s “at the appropriate time” in the Humphrey Appleby sense.

Previous: Voting fraud

Anyone reading the previous piece on the EU textile quotas might by surprised by the bizarreness of the U’s “Qualified Majority Voting” rules.
To recap:

Under QMV, a decision needs 232 out of 321 votes, AND a majority of countries, AND countries constituting 62% of EU population.

Where did those numbers come from?

The problem of the EU is that it is not a country, and no-one needs it.

If, say, a bunch of the biggest and richest US states felt like they were being outvoted in the federal government by people who were practically foreigners, it would be enormously difficult for them to just leave – they have 200+ years of history, essential government functions, and the precedent of a failed war of seccession to hold them in.

In the EU, any country could just decide to leave, much more easily. The institutional arrangements have to guarantee the most important members a reasonable say, because the EU can’t afford to lose them. At the same time, the EU has to pretend that it is really one country, and that a Slovakian or a Lithuanian is equal in status to a Frenchman or a Dutchman. The method of squaring this circle has been the weighting rules that ensure, on matters of significance, that the important countries can’t be overruled by unimportant countries. That was just about possible with 15 members, but now with 25, including the large population of Poland, it’s proving near impossible.

Some earlier arguments on the issue here

An interesting point in The Telegraph (a week or so old, but I just came across it at EU Referendum.)

The EU textile quotas that are causing all this trouble lately were introduced in haste back in June. Viewed in the cold light of day, they were particularly badly implemented (leaving aside the fact that they were a stupid idea in the first place), and it might seem reasonable to try to reverse them.

The interesting issue, however, is Qualified Majority Voting. The regulation was passed under QMV, which requires 232 out of 321 votes, AND a majority of countries, AND countries constituting 62% of EU population. link

To have prevented the measure would, therefore, have required 89 out of 321 votes, or countries constituting 39% of EU population. To reverse the measure now, however needs 232 votes and 62% of population – vastly more than would have served to block it in the first place. The unwise decision, therefore, is practically set in stone.

While I’ve looked at organisational features before, this implication of “supermajority” type voting hadn’t occured to me. In general, since I see legislative productivity as a bad thing, making it more difficult to pass legislation (via things like QMV) would strike me as beneficial. But this “trap” effect of supermajority votes could have nasty side-effects. If it is very much harder to reverse a measure than prevent it, there is greater incentive to use deceit or panic to achieve political aims. In an ordinary-majority system, it is still easier to prevent measures than reverse them, but a body “insulted” by being bamboozled by a minority into passing what it later regards as a bad law is likely to take revenge by reversing it.

But with supermajority voting, even a majority will be unable to do so. When combined with the lack of popular oversight and accountability of the EU institutions, that produces a huge incentive for dishonesty, artificial hysteria and generally bad politics.

About 2.5% of voters believed strongly enough that the UK should be independent that they voted UKIP. (I don’t have final figures yet).

That’s disappointing — I had hoped for something like twice that — but it’s still significant. Look at the seats that the Conservatives could have won with UKIP’s votes:

From Labour:

Battersea
Crawley
Dartford
Gillingham
Harlow
High Peak
Hove
Medway
Portsmouth North
Sittingbourne & Sheppey
Staffordshire Moorlands
Stourbridge
Stroud
Thanet South
Warwick & Leamington
Watford

From the Liberal Democrats:

Carshalton & Wallington
Eastleigh
Hereford
Romsey
Solihull
Somerton & Frome
Taunton
Torbay
Westmorland & Lonsdale

That wouldn’t have changed the overall outcome, but it would have left Tony Blair with a very slim majority, and the Liberal Democrats with practically no gains since 2001. These votes are there for the taking: when are the Conservatives (or Labour) going to pick them up?

Update: Harlow gets added to the list. A pro-independence Conservative party could probably have cut Labour’s majority to 34.

The Talk Politics blog criticises Lib Dem John Hemming’s attempt to bring greater control (at the last moment) to postal votes.

It doesn’t take a political genius to work out the consequences of allowing political parties to scrutinise applications for postal votes. Within a given district or ward, political parties are well aware of the likely levels of support both for themselves and for their opponents and equally that, if denied a postal vote, a proportion of those applicants will ultimately not vote at all. Far from scrutinising applications in the interests of preventing fraud, which is of course in the public interest, its inevitable that political parties will use the scrutiny process in their own interests by seeking, wherever possible, to depress the turnout in areas where they know their opponents are strong. It’s a system that’s intrinsically open to abuse and, frankly, crying out to be ‘worked’ for every political advantage it could possibly yield which mean, inevitably, that that is exactly what will happen.

How does he think parties will be able to depress turnout? The only way would be by pointing out that some postal vote applications are invalid – either the applicant is not entitled to vote, or the application has not been made by the ostensible applicant. In either of these cases identifying the problem would be a good thing.

This is an instance of the general fallacy of the undesirability of “partisanship” or “adversarialism”. If something should be found out, the best person to find it out is the person with an interest in it being found. A neutral party is needed to decide whether the accusation is justified, but the neutral or disinterested cannot be trusted to make proper
investigation.

The strength of our voting system is not that it is in the hands of the disinterested, but that it is visible to every interested party, who can verify that they are being treated fairly. The problem with postal voting is not that there are fewer “official” checks, but that it takes the whole process out of public view, where interested parties can no longer exert oversight. Whatever his
motives or faults, Hemming is right to attempt to repair that.

Related:
Voting Fraud

I’m well used to spin and deceit from politicians, and I tolerate it.
When I read in 2002 that “Saddam Hussein could be months away from developing a nuclear bomb if he can find a source of weapons-grade material, according to Western intelligence estimates.” I knew an attempt was being made to mislead me. This is normal.

Some misleading statements are lies which are difficult to prove wrong. Some (like the above) are true, but give a false impression. (The trick there is, as I wrote at the time, that just about anyone could produce a nuclear bomb in a few months if given the weapons-grade material). Some are things that could be true in rare and unlikely circumstances.

But how can anyone say “Overall, the postal voting system is no more prone to fraud than other electoral systems.” That is a simple claim of fact that is obviously and provably wrong. I consider it far more a disqualification for office than any of the usual “Blair lied” episodes.

Just seen make my vote count, a campaign for PR, via the General Election blog

I was about to sign myself up to its petition, but I saw a (random) quote at the top of the page referring admiringly to the Jenkins Report.

The Jenkins Report was the stitch-up that came up with the absurd “AV Plus” voting system, one carefully tailored to change a two-party system into a three-party system while minimising the danger of allowing voters real choice. (This is the system that is used for the London Assembly).

That puts supporters of democracy in the age-old bind: support a measure (AV+), which, while an improvement on the status quo, falls short of what is needed, or persist with the indefensible in the hope that it improves the chances that the “right” answer will become available.

In most cases, a step in the right direction makes further steps easier (see this paper by Eugene Volokh). On this basis, I support incremental tax cuts, deregulation, “civil libertarian” freedoms, even if they fall far short of what I would like to see. But in this case there seems to me a danger that the adoption of AV+ would mark “end of debate” of our voting system. The chief enemy in the struggle is boredom: most people are not interested. To go through a campaign, a referendum, and a major electoral change, and then tell the bored masses “actually, this still isn’t what we want, now let’s change it again to STV”, is to invite scorn and stubbornness.

I think I will probably have to support MMVC anyway. If it gets any momentum it will bore people whether it succeeds or fails, so it might as well succeed. There’s still the chance of getting a better system than AV+ into the debate, and most importantly, I don’t see any other realistic strategy for getting to STV.

Related previous articles:

Protest Votes and Fringe Parties
Bypassing Grassroots
Electoral Metaphysics

The Register reports a survey of attitudes to voting fraud.

The good news: a majority express concern about voting by SMS or email. It’s actually worrying that only 66% would be concerned about email-voting, but at least it’s a clear majority.

The bad news: “nearly 60%” believe that identity cards would be a solution for electoral fraud.

Now, it is possible for me to vote fraudulently by turning up at polling station and claiming to be someone else. But for that one fraudulent vote, I’m taking the risk of being noticed by someone who recognises me, or by someone who would recognise the person I’m claiming to be, or that the person I’m claiming to be has already voted, or that the person will try to vote later, which I might get away with, but which would at least raise suspicion. If I’m an eligible voter myself, I would be well advised to make my legitimate vote in a different polling station, which would entail some travelling. That’s a lot of work and risk for one crooked vote. I’m sure it happens, but not on any scale.

In the traditional UK system, every single step of the process is open to the public and visible, except for the voter marking the paper.

That’s actually really surprising. I can watch in my local polling stations as voters ask for ballot papers, are given them, hide in a booth to mark them, come out and put them in a box. I can watch the box all day. I can see the box carried to the counting room, and stand on the balcony as counters take the papers out of the boxes and sort them into piles. I don’t have to trust anyone else to oversee the process, it’s all there for me (or any other voter or candidate) to check.

The manual system is vulnerable to small human errors and small opportunistic fraud. It is totally immune to large systematic fraud, because that is bound to attract attention. In Bruce Schneier’s terminology, the system is resilient, despite being imperfect. The security protecting postal or electronic voting, conversely, is brittle: when it breaks, it breaks badly.

Related Links:

Schneier on voting
Schneier describes resilient and brittle security
No2ID

A few ideas to bring together on dealing with a first-past-the-post electoral system.

Assuming you’re not one of the few lucky people who have a major party that
shares your policies, you have several choices:

• Ignore politics (most popular option by a long, long way)
• Vote for the party nearest your views and count that as enough
• Vote tactically against the party furthest from your views and count that as enough
• Spoil your ballot in an attempt to show disaffection
• Vote for the major party most likely to change the voting system
• Join the party nearest your views and try to move it in your direction
• Support a minor party in the hope it will become a major party
• Support a minor party in the hope it will affect the policies of the major party.

I would have thought the above list was exhaustive, but a new tactic has been introduced:

• Vote tactically against the major party you’re closest to in the hope of affecting its policies

The first five are working with the parties as they are — either making the best of what’s
offered or attempting to change the voting system.

The next three attempt to change the political shape within the same system.

The only recent UK example of a minor party getting anywhere near becoming major is the SDP, which was formed by disaffected Labour MPs in the 1980s, won a few seats and eventually merged with the Liberal Party to form the current Liberal Democratic Party. The last new major party before that was the Labour Party.

click here for the rest of the article…