One hears - and so do I - that Labour's reshuffle was even more botched than it appeared (quite an achievement). The whispers, as yet unsubstantiated, say that not everyone who was asked to serve agreed. Amongst those who are said to have refused are Ken Mcintosh, Margaret Curran, Hugh Henry and Wendy Alexander. I wonder why they would refuse - if they did, of course.
In other interesting developments we have news coming from CJ and from a chap with the ould interests that 4,000 previously unidentified electors have appeared on the electoral roll in Glasgow North East, taking the total up to 64,000 or so - that would mean that, for every 15 voters who were on the register there was one hiding in the lobby press... It would be interesting to see the distribution of these new arrivals - are they entirely new households being added to the register or are they additions to households that were already on the register? Why did we have to wait until November for the contest to fill the vacancy?
Postal votes are up as well - by an extra couple of thousand, 1200 in the last month, 600 applications delivered by Labour on the last day. Terribly nice of Labour to save all those people the awful trouble of posting the form themselves - hopefully they'll be around to post the ballot papers back as well, save the voters any trouble at all. I wonder how many of those people newly on the register have also just become postal voters?
Vote early, vote often!
6 comments:
we need to know who the 600 added are and if they have been incentivised to vote labour or this has been done on the last day of their own volition.
600 in one day? it is a rort. but who arranged it.
PERHAPS it is linked to 2 old folks homes visited, and the ballots are PERHAPS filled out for them?
by those nice labour chappies who promised i can get a bigger pension and they were not cutting disability pensions, it must be the nasty SNP who are doing that.....
Labour in breach of code of conduct - postal vote applications need to be submitted within 2 working days of collection:
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/electoral_commission_pdf_file/0012/14115/Code-Of-Conduct-Postal-Votes-Scotland-FINAL.pdf
Of course, the 600 number may just be being made up Calum- give us some evidence of a smear campaign and while you are at it publish the figures of the number of postal votes in SNP marginal seats from 2007......
Meanwhile, I'll send you a copy of the letter I received from the SNP recently in my area saying- why don't you sign up for a postal vote- here is a form!
There's something about Labour's recent electoral activity. If there is not actual fraud, then where's that smell coming from?
http://scotland.shelter.org.uk/media/press_releases/press_release_folder/2009/more_homes_not_more_tinkering_should_be_priority_for_housing
Seems Labour's desperation to play the BNP at their own game is beginning to be noticed
It now turns out (according to the North to Leith blog) that lots of postal ballots are being rejected. Worth a read.
It's entirely proper to have parties encouraging the take-up of postal votes under the current system, but activists the lenght and breadth of the country will tell you that even a year-long campaign only ups the numbers marginally. Parties are also obliged, where the elector has returned the form to them rather than to the ERO, to ensure that it reaches the ERO within 48 hours. 600 received in two days? I think not.
That Shelter release is a bit daft. Cathy was calling for local authorities to be given a power they already have while Shelter are rattling about capital spend, ignoring the acceleration and the long-term commitment in place. If another £200 million was to be added to the Housing budget it would have to be removed from another budget - what would Shelter cut?
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