Sunday 1 June 2014

Our voting system is flawed but our politicians don't care

This is the title of an excellent piece by Charles Moore in Saturday's Telegraph,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/local-elections/10865271/Our-voting-system-is-flawed-but-politicians-dont-seem-to-care.html

It is subtitled in the push for ever wider 'engagement' with the electorate integrity is being lost.

Hear, hear.

The easily manipulated postal/proxy voting system was brought in by Labour in  the early 2000s to increase turnout but the real reason was Blair's lot presumed would boost their vote.. The defects of the system were seen in Tower Hamlets last week and previous to that in Woking in 2012 with many 'ghost' voters being registered by one Mohammed Bashir afterwards convicted iof corrupt practices. Richard Mawrey QC a judge who investigate this corruption praised the reurning offficer as an honest man trying to operate a dishonest system. Given it was brought in by our institutionally dishonest politicians that was scarcely a surprising outcome.

When you then add in the Muslim head of family women don't count social mores then you can have a few people controlling a large number of votes. The youf always featured on QT who celibrate cultural diversity whatever that means should pause to think that this is what they are supporting along with other repugnant practices such as forced marriage and resultant in-breeding, fgm and medieval laws on apostasy and punishment.

We have been here before in the run up to the 1872 Act which introduced the secret ballot in response to Irish tenant farmers being scared to vote against their landlords in a public show of hands. This is currently being chronicled in the re-run of the Pallisers on BBC2. One of the heroes of Trollope's five books was Plantagenet Palliser afterwards the Duke of Omnium who was a model of unimpeachable integrity.

Integrity is what we have lost in our current voting system. It is the prime requirement of any voting system If  politicians developed honesty engagement of all with the political process would follow as sure as night follows day. Engagement and turnout are secondary to integrity. Any system which is open to abuse will be abused as the Tower Hamlets behaviour has shown. I do not want to see the politics of the Souk take hold in any part of our country but we do not have a Plantagenet Palliser, Phineas Finn or Glencora Palliser leading political life in our country. Instead we have Cam, Milliband and Clegg now joined by Farage, a very motley crew indeed.

1 comment:

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