Steve Baker is MP for Wycombe, and served as a Minister in the former Department for Exiting the European Union.
It is easy for people living in small, stable communities to wonder why the Electoral Integrity Bill is needed at all. For those campaigning in urban areas, the answer will be obvious.
I am certain votes are being cast which ought not to be cast, votes which ought to be cast are being cast by those who ought not to be casting them, votes are being cast in particular ways as a result of treating and intimidation and, for various reasons, prosecutions are not forthcoming.
The Government is absolutely right to propose no party campaigners should handle postal votes. I know of cases where a person has turned up at a polling station several times with a clutch of postal votes in their hand. I have received accounts of candidates visiting electors’ homes, demanding postal votes are completed in front of them and then taking them away. I know these are not isolated incidents. We cannot assume voters enjoy secrecy and freedom when marking a ballot paper at home.
Our current electoral system has not caught up with population growth and the realities of modern life. Our procedures have become somewhat quaint, a point which struck me when I looked at the rules for candidates entering polling stations to check for personation. While I know many of my constituents, I do not know a sufficient number that I can go into every polling station and have any chance of spotting personation.
Those opposing the need to have photo ID when voting at a polling station say the number of people prosecuted for personation is low. I would agree. But the reason it is low is because all too often no prosecution is made despite overwhelming evidence being presented to the authorities.
Far from saying the provisions in the Election Integrity Bill are unwarranted, I would say they do not go far enough.
When Individual Voter Registration was introduced, I was pleased that, at last, it would not be possible for people to register more than once in a constituency. I quickly became wise to the fact it was still possible for people to vote more than once. In the 2017 election, an opposition activist was registered twice in a small street at different addresses. He voted at one address in person, and at the other with a postal vote. This was not a mere slip-up. He did the same at the General Election a few weeks later.
In urban areas, where there is a high churn of registrations, and where people live in houses of multiple occupation, it is not easy to determine who is entitled to be on the electoral roll and who isn’t. At one address in my constituency, a small three-bed Edwardian terraced house has 12 adults registered to vote. Either this is house is grossly over-occupied, or people are registered who have no right to do so. It just so happens that all those 12 voters regularly vote at election time.
I know of landlords who register to vote at properties they own, but where they do not reside. We have found foreign nationals on the electoral roll living legally in the United Kingdom, but who are neither nationals of the UK or the Commonwealth, nor EU citizens. Nevertheless, they are on our register to vote.
My election agent found out the hard way that if you want to object to a person’s name being on the electoral roll, your name is disclosed to the person to whom the objection is being made. Surely it should be possible to challenge an entry on the roll without disclosing who has made the complaint so long as there are reasonable grounds to do so?
I know the law allows people to register legally at more than one address, and that it is legal to vote in different elections on the same day. But the time has come to put a mark by people’s names showing which address is their principal residence, and therefore entitling them to vote at parliamentary elections, and which is a secondary address which will allow voting in local elections only.
The law is often very clear, but what is not clear is that appropriate importance is always attributed to each and every vote and to prosecuting offences. I am clear that when one vote is stolen, or otherwise corrupted away, it is not just a pencil mark on a piece of paper but the inheritance of a tradition of liberty and equality fought for at great cost and handed down over centuries.
If we fail to understand the magnitude of the corruption of even a single vote, we are a politically bankrupt nation.
Here is a link to Steve Baker’s recent speech on the Electoral Integrity Bill.
Steve Baker is MP for Wycombe, and served as a Minister in the former Department for Exiting the European Union.
It is easy for people living in small, stable communities to wonder why the Electoral Integrity Bill is needed at all. For those campaigning in urban areas, the answer will be obvious.
I am certain votes are being cast which ought not to be cast, votes which ought to be cast are being cast by those who ought not to be casting them, votes are being cast in particular ways as a result of treating and intimidation and, for various reasons, prosecutions are not forthcoming.
The Government is absolutely right to propose no party campaigners should handle postal votes. I know of cases where a person has turned up at a polling station several times with a clutch of postal votes in their hand. I have received accounts of candidates visiting electors’ homes, demanding postal votes are completed in front of them and then taking them away. I know these are not isolated incidents. We cannot assume voters enjoy secrecy and freedom when marking a ballot paper at home.
Our current electoral system has not caught up with population growth and the realities of modern life. Our procedures have become somewhat quaint, a point which struck me when I looked at the rules for candidates entering polling stations to check for personation. While I know many of my constituents, I do not know a sufficient number that I can go into every polling station and have any chance of spotting personation.
Those opposing the need to have photo ID when voting at a polling station say the number of people prosecuted for personation is low. I would agree. But the reason it is low is because all too often no prosecution is made despite overwhelming evidence being presented to the authorities.
Far from saying the provisions in the Election Integrity Bill are unwarranted, I would say they do not go far enough.
When Individual Voter Registration was introduced, I was pleased that, at last, it would not be possible for people to register more than once in a constituency. I quickly became wise to the fact it was still possible for people to vote more than once. In the 2017 election, an opposition activist was registered twice in a small street at different addresses. He voted at one address in person, and at the other with a postal vote. This was not a mere slip-up. He did the same at the General Election a few weeks later.
In urban areas, where there is a high churn of registrations, and where people live in houses of multiple occupation, it is not easy to determine who is entitled to be on the electoral roll and who isn’t. At one address in my constituency, a small three-bed Edwardian terraced house has 12 adults registered to vote. Either this is house is grossly over-occupied, or people are registered who have no right to do so. It just so happens that all those 12 voters regularly vote at election time.
I know of landlords who register to vote at properties they own, but where they do not reside. We have found foreign nationals on the electoral roll living legally in the United Kingdom, but who are neither nationals of the UK or the Commonwealth, nor EU citizens. Nevertheless, they are on our register to vote.
My election agent found out the hard way that if you want to object to a person’s name being on the electoral roll, your name is disclosed to the person to whom the objection is being made. Surely it should be possible to challenge an entry on the roll without disclosing who has made the complaint so long as there are reasonable grounds to do so?
I know the law allows people to register legally at more than one address, and that it is legal to vote in different elections on the same day. But the time has come to put a mark by people’s names showing which address is their principal residence, and therefore entitling them to vote at parliamentary elections, and which is a secondary address which will allow voting in local elections only.
The law is often very clear, but what is not clear is that appropriate importance is always attributed to each and every vote and to prosecuting offences. I am clear that when one vote is stolen, or otherwise corrupted away, it is not just a pencil mark on a piece of paper but the inheritance of a tradition of liberty and equality fought for at great cost and handed down over centuries.
If we fail to understand the magnitude of the corruption of even a single vote, we are a politically bankrupt nation.
Here is a link to Steve Baker’s recent speech on the Electoral Integrity Bill.