Postal Vote: I Told You So

I find myself frightened by the careless naivete (or reckless opportunism) behind the recent promotion of the postal vote on demand. After receiving an invitation from my MP to apply, I wrote to him inviting him to comment on the following situations:

• A controlling parent sits his/her family round the kitchen table and directs them how to vote.

What will you advise an 18 year-old child of such a parent to do? Refuse?

• A Patriarch tells his extended family to apply for postal votes so that he can tell them who to vote for.

What will you say to members of the family who feel oppressed and want to elect more enlightened representatives?  Lecture them on their rights in a modern society?

• A resident on a housing estate wants to vote for an anti-crime candidate but the local gangster family have told him to apply for a postal vote and vote as directed.

What should he do – shout for a policeman?

• A tenant of a dodgy landlord wants to vote for an anti-corruption candidate but her landlord threatens her with eviction and stands over her while she fills in the form.

What should she do – go to another room?

The secret ballot was not invented in a time so primitive there wasn’t a postal system – on the contrary back in the 1870’s there was a far better one than we have today. They could have had a postal ballot if they had felt it safe.

They invented the secret ballot so as to move the voter to a place of safety where no one could overlook the way he [and eventually she] voted. It was necessary because of the power landlords and oppressive employers had to punish people they saw voting contrary to their wishes.

It enfranchised vulnerable people. It took them to a safe place and said ‘Say what you really want and no-one can know or interfere’.

The postal ballot provides a tool for those who wish to exercise power over voters. It places the responsibility for standing up to them onto their vulnerable victims. It puts them in a public place and says ‘Try to say what you really want and If anyone interferes it is up to you to resist them.'

All of the above is about legally used ballot papers. (There is obviously a whole other lot of scary stuff involving ‘fiddles’, and the secret ballot is not 100% foolproof – but that’s another discussion.)

So I will get off my butt and walk a few hundred metres to the polling station because I know it’s important. And I will leave postal or proxy systems of voting for people with genuine verified needs.

As I vote I will also take a view about the kind of political party which thinks it worth taking this kind of risk in the hope of drumming up a few extra votes.'

Then in May 2015 this appeared in Private Eye:

So there we are. We can now answer the questions I posed in my original letter. The children of the controlling parent, the family of the oppressive patriarch, the hard pressed residents of that crime ridden estate and the exploited tenant are to be told they

'...must not let anyone "watch you while you complete your postal ballot paper".'

That'll do it won't it?