They've made their own bed.
Since the UK under Blair got involved with Bush's war in 2003, they've never really been seen to be listening to and delivering for the British people.
The Financial crash, Austerity, Brexit, Covid and then when Labour got in again, they've treated being in power like something they never spent a second thinking about how to do it.
The Tories or Labour will need a Blair or a Thatcher to take control for an extended period while also delivering for the people. Its not an easy task, by any stretch. And even if it was, im not so sure the string candidates exist.
Manchester Police say they have no reports of electoral offences in Gorton and Denton by-election.
Maybe I'm doing them a disservice, but the sudden appearance of an org called 'Democracy Volunteers' sounded to me suspiciously like our Gript-affiliated 'citizen journalists' or one of the pseudo freeman groups like Integrity Ireland.
It should be noted that there was zero Labour/Green vote split that could possibly have got Reform in here.
They are clutching at straws trying to think that there was coercion against Muslim women who were going to vote for them somehow.
I would hope they are vetted and accredited otherwise they should be no-where near polling stations. I would also expect that they would highlight alleged irregularities at the time when they are in the polling station, not compile a report and issue it to the media when the polls close.
Of course, family voting is most likely to occur when filling out postal votes at home not in the polling station
Talk about coercion against Muslim women is downright racist. Most Muslims were never going to vote for Reform - Farage has been talking about setting up a British version of ICE and deporting everyone.
They are vetted and accredited and have been around for 10 years.
I would assume most election observers do not intervene directly but compile reports - but my knowledge of the area is limited.
Has the gray man resigned yet?
Intervene to try and stop alleged irregularities… no
Report any alleged irregularities to the presiding officier at the polling station… yes
Isn't it great to see a plumber running for parliament, and then actually getting elected!
Brass neck on the man
Not too dissimilar to this.
Saw a good tweet in response to Badenoch posting this. Someone said, "She should sit this one out, as she's using more words in her post than they won votes in the contest".
Both of them notable in not looking inward.
The Tories lost their deposit. That statement from Badenoch is deranged.
I would not expect them to do that no. They are there to report on how the processes in place actually work (or don't)
Since when are voting irregularities a thing in UK elections and by-elections? Anyone reading these stories today about 'Democracy Volunteers' would be given the impression that voter fraud is the absolute norm in Britain (a country where every voter must have photo ID on their person).
They're not generally.
I find the DV's report to be fairly bland and fact based and clearly referencing only this by-election. So how you get that takeaway i don't know. You seem to be upset at the very concept of election monitoring.
I don't think I can every remember a UK election or by-election where voter fraud or manipulation was supposedly a factor in the result and certainly not in a constituency where a candidate won by a big margin and not by 30 votes or whatever. And yet, UK social media today seems to be full of claims by right wing accounts of voting irregularities and 'family voting' in Gorton. Fine if people want to discuss that as a subject, but they should be adding that it clearly had no material impact on the election result.
I don't remember one either but that seems somewhat irrelevant. DV made a statement about some worrying patterns they saw on this particular occasion - that is literally what they are there to do. They can't control what happens beyond that.
The focus on individual issues is always higher in a by-election though, particularly one that took on such importance as this.
Interestingly that 'family voting' only seems to have become a phrase in the last 24 hours. I had a look at the Democracy Volunteers website and they have been going on about this for 10 years.
I am somewhat dubious about their figures though - they estimated in the Irish 2018 Referendum (8th Repeal) that 7% of voters were engaged in this practise. Obviously I only vote in one station, but I've voted cumulative 30 times at different times of the day and never seen more than one person in a booth.
Democracy Volunteers FINAL REPORT – Ireland’s Referendum on the 36th Amendment of the Constitution (Abortion) 25/05/18
When I voted in our most recent election, I saw a fair number of very elderly people being accompanied into the polling station. I didn't hang about to observe what happened inside, but I presume if they needed help to walk in, they probably needed help inside, and could have been accompanied at each step of the process.
The alternative - telling these people to fend for themselves - would have left them incapable of voting or at the very least uncomfortable in the process of doing so.
The whole thing seems to me to be a storm in a teacup, or more likely, a thinly-veiled racism against people from the Indian subcontinent.
It's a somewhat odd thing for people to be getting energised about. A husband and wife might actively want to vote in the same booth - it's a very big leap to suggest that the husband is forcing or coercing his wife to vote in a certain way (How could anybody know this? The actual ballot paper is anonymous and secret when it goes into the box).
Eh? It is not remotely a big leap. It is also illegal regardless.
It is clearly a bit of a hobby horse for this group but there has been no indication that their report is not accurate.
So the group spotted alleged illegality but decided not to bring it to the attention of the officials in the polling station.
How are this group monitoring family voting using postal votes?
But that still means 93% didn't do it.
Presumably you only voted once in that referendum. Polling stations are open from, what 7 am to 10 pm? What percentage of the voters in your polling station came through at the same time as you?
Because unless you spent hours in the polling station looking around - ie not voting - it would be a huge coincidence to actually see anything much. That's why observers are needed in the first place.
It's interesting though that the DV group are indeed who they say they are, a bona fide observation group and not some agenda-driven extremists as some have tried to make out.
Again you seem to have an issue with "observers" as a concept. They aren't there to intervene, they are to see if the existing structures are working.
They are not. It is a well known issue with postal voting and ultimately comes down to a judgement call as to the utility vs the risk.
Again, their role is to go to elections and report on what they see. That is it.
Would be nigh on impossible to prove that 'coercion' had taken place, given that the ballot paper is anonymous and secret when it goes into the box (i.e. nobody knows who was voted for….the pair might have voted for two different candidates). The only aspect that could be enforced would be electoral staff separating two people and insisting they don't vote at the same booth.
I think if there is a problem with families, or entire social groups, voting as they are told, then postal voting is far more likely to be the real issue there. I don't really see how measures to prevent group voting in person can be very effective overall when someone can just fill in a bunch of postal votes and send those in.
since you can no longer take your wife’s polling card to the polling station and vote on her behalf? Now you have to drag her along and make sure she ticks the right box. oh the hardship of it all.
People just use the postal vote
so does that need banning as well?
