Monday evening 9th February
I attended the Shire Hall in Hereford for the Nominations
Officer’s briefing to all the Election candidates. After the usual advice about nominations and
deposits I was totally shocked
to hear how the Count was going to be conducted. “We will be holding a new type of count” said John
Jones the Nominations Officer.
Political parties Count Agents will only be allowed to stand at the end of a table of 8 counting staff, where
the votes on each table will be
counted and the tally for that table will be secreted away by the Returning Officer and a running total kept by
him alone; there will be no
central deposit of counted and bundled votes, where anyone can see who is leading, there will be no indication
as to what the current situation
is and no Candidate or agent can use a phone or camera in the counting area. All Press and TV cameras are
to be kept out of the Count and
restricted to a separate anteroom. The result will be announced by the Returning Office from the figures
entered on his lap-top by him
alone.
I have stood as a candidate in 7
Elections and attended 4 others as a Count Agent and I have never, ever seen a “Covert Count “before. I
have never considered that in
Britain the Democratic system could be so open to abuse.
The Herefordshire counts are not
the only elections that will be held in secret... “There will be several others” we were told. Why the
secrecy?
How can you run a fair,
transparent and honest election and how can you prove that the election was fair if nobody saw all the votes?
Where is the
evidence?
So let’s guess which other
counts will be held in secret. 30 other English seats, 10 Welsh seats and 7 in Scotland. All targeted as
“safe “Conservative or “safe
“Labour seats that have been identified by the Boundary Commission as part of the strategy to remove 50 MPs from
Parliament under the
Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill
Feb2011.
Nick Clegg refused to support
the Bill so now it awaits the next government to enact. The last thing that the Commission needs is
for UKIP to sneak away with a
seat and spoil their plans. Any change of tenant will mean that the seat cannot be considered for disposal.
If H.M. Government was honest it
would simply remove the seats on the Dissolution of Parliament but the Act hasn’t caught up with the
timeline, so perhaps the seats
should continue until a government can get its act together. Perhaps the Boundary Commission should pick on a
different safe seat...Whitney
springs to mind, and leave North Herefordshire alone.
It is really unfair to the staff
at Hereford Council to put them in such a position where the result will challenged, especially when there
will be no photographic proof
that they are innocent.
When political parties are spending their very
hard earned private money to
enter the democratic process they expect better than this.
So too do all the voters of which
ever party.
