BANANA REPUBLIC

Over at Curly’s Corner Shop (http://curly15.wordpress.com), the problem of potential fraudulent voter activity was highlighted with regard to postal voting in Leeds. According to David Hencke in today’s Guardian, there may also be a problem with “e-voting” and “e-centres”. In a desperate attempt to raise voter turnout, the government has approved some hair brained schemes with a technological slant. South Bucks is the most controversial Borough, where voters will have the choice of internet, telephone and postal voting. However, ministers overseeing the eight councils involved in the experiment “forgot” to grant the Electoral Commission legal permission to demand access to net servers and e- counting centres. As such, some councils are getting a bit snotty as to the degree of access they will allow, with “grace and favour agreements” being the norm. If this was Zimbabwe I could understand the problems, but it is not. We class ourselves as the “mother of all democracies”, yet we behave like a banana republic. As to the ministers concerned with a lack of attention, of course they “forgot”. With the governments technological record on the NHS data base and junior doctor applications, no wonder they neglected to involve the Commission, the only body capable of blowing a hole in this ill conceived charade. Blair's Mandarins have still to get to grips with postal voting, never mind the internet!