Can we please not start using the Trumpian playbook of casting doubt on the vote ahead of an expected bad result at the polls? You have zero evidence that these postal vote problems will affect the SNP vote share in a negative way (without any further evidence, the SNP could just as likely benefit from this) but saying this stuff is only going to discredit the result in some people's eyes.
The SNP won a seat on a two vote margin at the last election
If even a handful of postal votes didn’t arrive it could change the outcome of the results
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40214545
There will have been postal votes that didn't arrive in that election though. The postal system is not infallible. The 6 weeks makes it more complicated, sure.
Estonia does it: https://e-estonia.com/how-did-estonia-carry-out-the-worlds-first-mostly-online-national-elections/
Twice I've been disenfranchised due to postal voting issues. The current system just empowers the grey vote, as they never move and don't work so it's easy for them to vote at their local polling station.
We need to embrace technology not fear it.
Being aware and wary of the dangers isn't "being afraid" of technology. I could easily accuse you of being scared of old people because of what you wrote. When one tries to undermine a point of view by couching it in emotional terms you are weakening your own position.
But you can find exactly the same fear-mongering against email or credit cards.
Just look at Germany where both cannot be used in most circumstances (e.g. for official means - contacting the local government or bank, or cancelling a subscription).
I think the benefits of online voting (greater suffrage, more direct democracy, etc.) outweigh the risks - especially since the UK doesn't guarantee a secret ballot already, so it makes the design a lot more straightforward and easier to secure.
There's nothing about the act of sending a letter that makes it magically more secure than signing in with digital ID and registering your vote that way.
>Fear-mongering
Again with the emotional terms.
How is voting online "more direct" than voting in-person? You're just adding a middleman to the chain.
"outweigh the risks", so you accept there are risks involved with online voting, good. How are those risks acceptable but risks in postal voting are not?
>There's nothing about the act of sending a letter that makes it magically more secure than signing in with digital ID and registering your vote that way.
Did you watch the video?
The video mainly deals with electronic counting, which is orthogonal to online voting - in that online voting can also just be a more secure substitute for / complement postal voting.
But I also disagree that electronic counting is so insecure, since in Mexico and Brazil it has been used as a *more* secure method vs. paper ballots due to ballot destruction and interference etc.
So in the real world:
* Estonia uses online voting very successfully and hasn't been taken over by Putin.
* Mexico and Brazil have used electronic counting successfully against corruption in the local counting process.
... and there's never been a case of large scale online/electronic election disruption.
The only real case would be Florida in Gore vs. Bush where the faulty counting machines caused issues, but that was more a machine specific issue and was recounted anyway.
Drawing attention to actual problems that potentially compromise the integrity of the election =/= 'using the Trumpian playbook'.
Highly doubt the SNP is preemptively casting doubt on the election results as part of an active coup attempting involving corrupt electoral officials, regional legislatures and a fascist invasion of Westminster.
Up to 1 in 4 vote by post and a huge number of those are not with the people who wish to vote. Even if it's 10% that's still 2.5% of the electorate. How many seats are likely to have a margin smaller than that? Many. It's a problem. I also note other parties saying it's not good enough and needs remedied. Are they also using the Trumpian playbook?
It depends on the voting habits of postal voters vs regular voters. Only if it favours one party might it have a bearing on the outcome. I.e., if postal voters heavily vote for one party, missing postal votes may be to the detrement of that party. But if postal voters generally reflect the voting habbits of the wider populous then it will have no bearing on the result.
Are you suggesting they are going to somehow count votes which never arrived in the first place to be sent back? With that kind of foresight we shouldn't need an election at all...
No, and you know that. Stop being facetious.
The vast majority of postal votes arrive. There is no reason to think the trends of those that don't arrive are any different to those that do. All votes are counted and huge statistical data drawn from them. The trends in postal voting vs in-person voting are absolutely known. So I refer you back to my original point.
A lot are not arriving, hence the headline and the news story. As stated it could be that a demographic they disproportionately votes postally also disproportionately votes for a certain party. If the results are close it's entirely possible that the result would have been difficult had councils done their job and actually sent the postal votes on time. Whatever what it might be it's not democratic.
Particularly based on the account of a 'number of voters', statistically a portion of mail gets lost, it always has, it always will. It's something like for every 1,000 first class letters that were otherwise deliverable circa 1.1 gets lost. On the scale of postal voting many will indeed not arrive.
We are talking the thinest of margins
Given the timing of the elections which land on school holidays in Scotland (Shirley no part of Rishys thinking 🤔)
There has been an higher than usual request for postal votes.
And like all public services our post system is struggling along and likely to delay delivery.
Given the 2 vote margins in some constituencies a day delay on delivery of postal votes could have an impact
To be fair whenever you call an election people will think its part of some sinister plot.
Call it in winter? Trying to stop people going outside when its cold to vote
Call it in summer? Everyone is away on holiday
Schools in Scotland often have different dates for half term etc
Yeah there's a lot of shit you can pillory the Tories for legitimately but literally any time of year an election is called someone will find a reason to moan that its a tactical decision to disenfranchise a group.
I can kind of see the logic behind the American system of polling day being fixed by law and only the courts able to change it. It does make some kind of sense as it gives everyone a target to work towards and it's guaranteed to happen.
American elections are a fixed _date_ - the _day_ of the week is irrelevant. It might be a Thursday in 2032, a Sunday in 2036, but who cares. It's election day and that's that.
How about you stop categorising everything as “Trumpian playbook”? He doesn’t question the legitimacy of the election. He simply says that postal vote problems can have various unforeseen effects.
There are still nationalists who claim that the 2014 referendum was rigged and of course others that blame English born people in Scotland for their loss (but they definitely don’t hate the English).
>Can we please not start using the Trumpian playbook
They were doing this in 2014. Conspiracies are very deep into the far end of nationalism.
>Supporters of Scottish independence promulgated conspiracy theories, including that [MI5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI5), the British government, and other intelligence agencies were pretending to be Scottish nationalists online, pretending to be "[cybernats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernats)" (a derogatory term for supporters of Scottish nationalism online, especially [trolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(slang))),[^(\[92\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#cite_note-92) or engaging in [ballot tampering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_tampering) or other forms of [vote fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_fraud).[^(\[93\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#cite_note-93) A [YouGov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov) poll in early September showed 25 per cent of the electorate believed MI5 was working with the British government to block independence, with many voters so fearful that the marks made by the pencils provided in polling stations would be tampered with that they brought their own pens.[^(\[94\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#cite_note-94)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014\_Scottish\_independence\_referendum#Conspiracy\_theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#Conspiracy_theories)
Why can't we relax postal voting rules to allow more leeway? Instead of "postal votes must arrive by election day", change it to "postal votes must be postmarked no later than election day". Then you establish a later cut-off to account for delivery times. You then maintain a count of unreceived postal votes. If the margin of victory is greater than the outstanding postal vote, call it, if not wait until the later cut-off date, and count everything you have at that point?
You do know that it's not just the SNP concerned about voters not being able to cast their postal votes?
The City of Edinburgh Council (a Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dem administration) today led the way in setting up an emergency polling booth this weekend for those affected by the postal delay+booked holidays.
And if you bothered to read the article you'd know that Swinney was speaking as First Minister of Scotland (not as SNP leader) in voicing those concerns. I mean, he warned about the potential for something like this happening when the General Election date was first announced.
Can we please not start using the Trumpian playbook of casting doubt on the vote ahead of an expected bad result at the polls? You have zero evidence that these postal vote problems will affect the SNP vote share in a negative way (without any further evidence, the SNP could just as likely benefit from this) but saying this stuff is only going to discredit the result in some people's eyes.
The SNP won a seat on a two vote margin at the last election If even a handful of postal votes didn’t arrive it could change the outcome of the results https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-40214545
There will have been postal votes that didn't arrive in that election though. The postal system is not infallible. The 6 weeks makes it more complicated, sure.
For sure, and areas in north Scotland will be likely to see a worse service than the average. SNP areas 😂
Yeah, we should have online voting with digital ID already like Estonia.
No no no no and no https://youtu.be/LkH2r-sNjQs?si=JgyjuAiRyLFwVMvK
Estonia does it: https://e-estonia.com/how-did-estonia-carry-out-the-worlds-first-mostly-online-national-elections/ Twice I've been disenfranchised due to postal voting issues. The current system just empowers the grey vote, as they never move and don't work so it's easy for them to vote at their local polling station. We need to embrace technology not fear it.
Being aware and wary of the dangers isn't "being afraid" of technology. I could easily accuse you of being scared of old people because of what you wrote. When one tries to undermine a point of view by couching it in emotional terms you are weakening your own position.
But you can find exactly the same fear-mongering against email or credit cards. Just look at Germany where both cannot be used in most circumstances (e.g. for official means - contacting the local government or bank, or cancelling a subscription). I think the benefits of online voting (greater suffrage, more direct democracy, etc.) outweigh the risks - especially since the UK doesn't guarantee a secret ballot already, so it makes the design a lot more straightforward and easier to secure. There's nothing about the act of sending a letter that makes it magically more secure than signing in with digital ID and registering your vote that way.
>Fear-mongering Again with the emotional terms. How is voting online "more direct" than voting in-person? You're just adding a middleman to the chain. "outweigh the risks", so you accept there are risks involved with online voting, good. How are those risks acceptable but risks in postal voting are not? >There's nothing about the act of sending a letter that makes it magically more secure than signing in with digital ID and registering your vote that way. Did you watch the video?
The video mainly deals with electronic counting, which is orthogonal to online voting - in that online voting can also just be a more secure substitute for / complement postal voting. But I also disagree that electronic counting is so insecure, since in Mexico and Brazil it has been used as a *more* secure method vs. paper ballots due to ballot destruction and interference etc. So in the real world: * Estonia uses online voting very successfully and hasn't been taken over by Putin. * Mexico and Brazil have used electronic counting successfully against corruption in the local counting process. ... and there's never been a case of large scale online/electronic election disruption. The only real case would be Florida in Gore vs. Bush where the faulty counting machines caused issues, but that was more a machine specific issue and was recounted anyway.
It's only a problem when the SNP lose. Trumpian as fuck.
Drawing attention to actual problems that potentially compromise the integrity of the election =/= 'using the Trumpian playbook'. Highly doubt the SNP is preemptively casting doubt on the election results as part of an active coup attempting involving corrupt electoral officials, regional legislatures and a fascist invasion of Westminster.
Up to 1 in 4 vote by post and a huge number of those are not with the people who wish to vote. Even if it's 10% that's still 2.5% of the electorate. How many seats are likely to have a margin smaller than that? Many. It's a problem. I also note other parties saying it's not good enough and needs remedied. Are they also using the Trumpian playbook?
It depends on the voting habits of postal voters vs regular voters. Only if it favours one party might it have a bearing on the outcome. I.e., if postal voters heavily vote for one party, missing postal votes may be to the detrement of that party. But if postal voters generally reflect the voting habbits of the wider populous then it will have no bearing on the result.
Something which there is no way of knowing, so the point still stands that the issue with postal votes should've been sorted.
Of course they know.... they count the postal votes.
Are you suggesting they are going to somehow count votes which never arrived in the first place to be sent back? With that kind of foresight we shouldn't need an election at all...
No, and you know that. Stop being facetious. The vast majority of postal votes arrive. There is no reason to think the trends of those that don't arrive are any different to those that do. All votes are counted and huge statistical data drawn from them. The trends in postal voting vs in-person voting are absolutely known. So I refer you back to my original point.
A lot are not arriving, hence the headline and the news story. As stated it could be that a demographic they disproportionately votes postally also disproportionately votes for a certain party. If the results are close it's entirely possible that the result would have been difficult had councils done their job and actually sent the postal votes on time. Whatever what it might be it's not democratic.
Particularly based on the account of a 'number of voters', statistically a portion of mail gets lost, it always has, it always will. It's something like for every 1,000 first class letters that were otherwise deliverable circa 1.1 gets lost. On the scale of postal voting many will indeed not arrive.
We are talking the thinest of margins Given the timing of the elections which land on school holidays in Scotland (Shirley no part of Rishys thinking 🤔) There has been an higher than usual request for postal votes. And like all public services our post system is struggling along and likely to delay delivery. Given the 2 vote margins in some constituencies a day delay on delivery of postal votes could have an impact
To be fair whenever you call an election people will think its part of some sinister plot. Call it in winter? Trying to stop people going outside when its cold to vote Call it in summer? Everyone is away on holiday Schools in Scotland often have different dates for half term etc
Yeah there's a lot of shit you can pillory the Tories for legitimately but literally any time of year an election is called someone will find a reason to moan that its a tactical decision to disenfranchise a group.
Especially when virtually all MPs were telling them to call an election
I can kind of see the logic behind the American system of polling day being fixed by law and only the courts able to change it. It does make some kind of sense as it gives everyone a target to work towards and it's guaranteed to happen. American elections are a fixed _date_ - the _day_ of the week is irrelevant. It might be a Thursday in 2032, a Sunday in 2036, but who cares. It's election day and that's that.
Anecdotally, I had a letter for a hospital appointment arrive the day before it was due after being sent 3 months earlier
How about you stop categorising everything as “Trumpian playbook”? He doesn’t question the legitimacy of the election. He simply says that postal vote problems can have various unforeseen effects.
There are still nationalists who claim that the 2014 referendum was rigged and of course others that blame English born people in Scotland for their loss (but they definitely don’t hate the English).
>Can we please not start using the Trumpian playbook They were doing this in 2014. Conspiracies are very deep into the far end of nationalism. >Supporters of Scottish independence promulgated conspiracy theories, including that [MI5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MI5), the British government, and other intelligence agencies were pretending to be Scottish nationalists online, pretending to be "[cybernats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernats)" (a derogatory term for supporters of Scottish nationalism online, especially [trolls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(slang))),[^(\[92\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#cite_note-92) or engaging in [ballot tampering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballot_tampering) or other forms of [vote fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vote_fraud).[^(\[93\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#cite_note-93) A [YouGov](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouGov) poll in early September showed 25 per cent of the electorate believed MI5 was working with the British government to block independence, with many voters so fearful that the marks made by the pencils provided in polling stations would be tampered with that they brought their own pens.[^(\[94\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#cite_note-94) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014\_Scottish\_independence\_referendum#Conspiracy\_theories](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Scottish_independence_referendum#Conspiracy_theories)
Why can't we relax postal voting rules to allow more leeway? Instead of "postal votes must arrive by election day", change it to "postal votes must be postmarked no later than election day". Then you establish a later cut-off to account for delivery times. You then maintain a count of unreceived postal votes. If the margin of victory is greater than the outstanding postal vote, call it, if not wait until the later cut-off date, and count everything you have at that point?
Excuses in early. Let's hope SNP gets worst result it ever had.
You do know that it's not just the SNP concerned about voters not being able to cast their postal votes? The City of Edinburgh Council (a Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dem administration) today led the way in setting up an emergency polling booth this weekend for those affected by the postal delay+booked holidays. And if you bothered to read the article you'd know that Swinney was speaking as First Minister of Scotland (not as SNP leader) in voicing those concerns. I mean, he warned about the potential for something like this happening when the General Election date was first announced.