Democracy

"One of this Government's proud achievements has been helping to bring democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq - where elections were policed by imprinting a finger of every voter with indelible ink. Yet at home it has corrupted an electoral system that the world once looked up to. Ministers were warned as long ago as May 2000 about the lack of security in postal votes. Yet they ploughed on, claiming that postal voting would reinvigorate the electoral system by encouraging more to vote. Postal voting has certainly achieved that - at least among the deceased and fictitious. Never mind an indelible fingerprint; in Britain you can put any name on the electoral register with little chance of the information being checked. You can apply for a postal vote in someone else's name, and, astonishingly, have the ballot paper sent to an address other than where the voter is registered as living. In a remarkable exception to the Government's commitment to equality, electoral registration forms are posted not directly to the voter but to the household, helping bullying community elders to cast block votes."

Ross Clark in The Times.





Thanks to Samizdata for the spot.