Election nominations

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.