United Kingdom: Scottish independence: Facebook adds ‘registered to vote’ life event | BBC

Facebook has launched new a “life event” enabling people to tell friends they have registered to vote in the independence referendum. The feature will allow users over 16 in Scotland to add the life event to their Facebook timeline. The move is part of a campaign by the Electoral Commission to raise awareness of the voter registration process. It comes as the campaign ahead of the 18 September vote enters its final weeks. The elections watchdog will also send a guide to voting in the referendum to every household in Scotland. Scottish Facebook users who visit the social network site over the next few weeks will also see posts in their newsfeed about an interactive referendum guide from the Electoral Commission.

United Kingdom: Expat voter drive fell flat | Telegraph

A campaign to persuade British expats to vote in the European and local elections fell well short of its target, according to the Electoral Commission. An estimated 5.5 million Britons live overseas, but only a fraction – around 20,000 – were registered to vote in the UK as of February this year. The commission ran a campaign in the weeks before the elections on May 22 to encourage 25,000 more of them to register. However, only 7,079 did so – less than a third of the number hoped for. The Electoral Commission’s pre-ballot campaign involved advertisements on expat radio stations, and collaborations with the Foreign Office, groups such as Votes for Expat Brits, and political parties’ overseas networks. But in a report reflecting on the campaign, the commission disclosed that, although the number of registration forms downloaded from its website by Britons overseas was higher than for the previous European elections, it “fell well short” of its target. “Although we were disappointed not to hit our target we recognise that expatriates at these elections may have chosen to register to vote in their EU countries of residence,” said the report.

United Kingdom: Scotland to allow 16-year-olds to vote on independence | Macleans

Last September, Saffron Dickson, then 15 years old (now “16 and three-quarters”), attended a televised BBC debate in Glasgow on the subject of the upcoming Scottish referendum. Partway through the show, the host opened the floor to comments—and Dickson shot for the mike. Smiling saucily for the cameras, in bleached-blond hair and a dark leather jacket, she gave the people of Scotland an earful: “We don’t live in a country where we have equal rights,” she cried, raising a furious hand to the sky. “Westminster bakes the Empire Biscuit and we put the jelly tot on top. And we’re supposed to be completely ecstatic about having that little bit of power. But we won’t be silenced by your ideology!” Within weeks, Dickson had become “a wee bit” of a political celebrity in Scotland, which is now less than two months away from a historic referendum on independence from Britain. Today, Dickson is on the central board of Generation Yes, a large pro-independence youth movement, and a regular media fixture. Asked whether she hopes to run for office one day, she’s emphatic: “Yes!”

United Kingdom: Scotland’s expats want a say on independence from Britain | Los Angeles Times

From the time he was a wee lad on his grandpa’s knee, Ian Cowe had pride in his Scottish roots drummed into his bonny little head. Born in Edinburgh, he went to college there, spent part of his career in Scotland and joined the local Scottish cultural society when he was posted to Hong Kong. So he takes great interest in the referendum that could change his homeland, and the rest of Britain, forever. In September, voters in Scotland will decide whether the time has come to split from England and Wales and form the world’s newest independent nation, without a single shot fired. Cowe, 82, now lives in pleasant retirement in Berwick-upon-Tweed, England’s northernmost town. He can stand on the centuries-old ramparts and gaze across the border at Scotland just two miles away. He can get to Edinburgh by train — which he does once a week — faster than to the nearest English city, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. What he can’t do is cast a ballot Sept. 18. Only people living in Scotland proper have the right to vote in the binding plebiscite, leaving “expatriate” Scots such as Cowe without a say in the matter, regardless of their family history, emotional ties or sense of Scottish identity.

United Kingdom: Prisoners’ appeal to vote in Scottish independence referendum rejected | The Independent

Two prisoners, who argued that rules which bar them from voting in the Scottish independence referendum breach their human rights, have lost an appeal at the Supreme Court. The UK’s highest court dismissed claims brought by Leslie Moohan and Andrew Gillon following a day-long hearing in London on Thursday. A panel of Supreme Court Justices analysed provisions laid out in the Scottish Independence Referendum (Franchise) Act 2013, and considered whether a ban on prisoners voting was incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and whether they breached the common law right to vote. The justices were told that both inmates want to vote in the referendum on September 18 but are not eligible under the Franchise Act.

United Kingdom: Online voting registration – what’s the verdict? | Public Technology

The UK’s democracy has many problems. Important among these is the fact that swathes of the population don’t exercise their right to vote – something that’s both a consequence and, less directly, a cause of the growing public disenchantment with our political leaders. In the last general election, for example, turnout was just 65%; in May’s European elections, it was a paltry 34%. There are many reasons behind these low figures – and some of them, at least, have their roots in our electoral system. As the Coalition Agreement was being drawn up in 2010, the Liberal Democrats inserted a referendum on the Alternative Vote system of PR. This was soundly lost: they had accepted a timetable which ensured the referendum would coincide with both continued recession, and expanding austerity. But another electoral reform has survived: the shift from household to individual voter registration. …  It is, therefore, essential that the new system makes joining the roll as easy as possible, creating the lowest possible barriers consistent with security against fraud. A key part of this accessibility is the ERTP’s online registration service, and this has now gone live.

United Kingdom: Electoral Commission criticises European election count delay | BBC

A watchdog has criticised the length of time it took to count votes in Northern Ireland during May’s European election. The Electoral Commission has also criticised the way the count was organised and how staff were deployed. The commission said significant work needed to be done to consider the benefits of electronic counting. Electoral commissioner Anna Carragher said lessons need to be learned ahead of next year’s General Election and the next NI Assembly elections in 2016. She leads the independent watchdog that monitors how Northern Ireland’s elections are run.

United Kingdom: As Scotland decides, not all Scots get a vote | Reuters

Ruth McPherson was born and educated in Scotland but left to work in London two years ago and so has no say on whether her native country should end three centuries of union with England. Over a million Scots like McPherson living outside the land of their birth can take no part in its Sept. 18 referendum on breaking from the rest of Britain, while one in six of those who can vote were not born in Scotland. That has fuelled a debate on just what it means to be Scottish in the 21st century. “It’s ridiculous,” said McPherson, 26. Born in Inverness and brought up in nearby Elgin in the north, she studied in the capital, Edinburgh, before following generations of compatriots south of the English border for a job in publishing. “I will be a Scottish citizen if the Yes vote goes through,” she said. “It seems ridiculous that you can be a Scottish citizen without being able to take part in this decision.”

United Kingdom: Young people should be encouraged to vote as soon as possible after their 18th birthday to start a habit of a lifetime, advises expert | Wales Online

A leading Welsh expert on voting has told MPs it is “vital” that young people cast their first votes as close to their 18th birthdays as possible so they start the habit of a lifetime. The warning from Rebecca Rumbul of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre comes at a time of high concern about low turnouts in recent election. In the recent European elections, less than one in three eligible people took part. Around four of 10 of the electorate voted in the 2011 National Assembly election and only 36% participated in that year’s referendum on law-making powers. She is concerned there is a “growing group of young people who will probably never reach that point where they engage in voting”. One option to encourage voting, she suggested in her evidence, was to allow people to register to vote on election day.

United Kingdom: Referendum recount ruling | Herald Scotland

IT could be a nail-biting finish but election officials have warned there will not be a recount if the independence question is decided by just one or two votes. A close result will not be enough to trigger a repeat count, officials say. Only concerns about the integrity of the process in the 32 counting areas will be considered a sufficient reason. The warning comes from Mary Pitcaithly, the chief counting officer for the referendum. Both sides are hoping for a clear and definitive result on the morning of September 19. But historical parallels suggest that that may not happen.

United Kingdom: People with learning disabilities need more information to help them vote | The Guardian

So many major news stories emerged from this year’s local and European elections – from Ukip’s European triumphs to the woes of the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg – that one local controversy went relatively unnoticed. This was the allegation – made by local Labour MP Kate Green – that an unnamed councillor in Trafford had been heard to say in a polling station that a person with a learning disability “shouldn’t be voting”. To her credit, returning officer Theresa Grant immediately launched an investigation into the matter. We don’t yet know exactly what happened in that incident, but if such a remark was uttered it would be deplorable, but not as shocking as it should be. Sadly, many people still believe that people with learning disabilities or mental health needs shouldn’t have the right to vote, which is one of the many factors why they vote in far lower numbers than the rest of the population.

United Kingdom: Register to vote online goes live | Computer Weekly

The latest online transactional service from government has gone live as part of the digital by default initiative to put more public services online. Electoral registration is the third public service to go live online after lasting power of attorney and student finance. These public services are three of the 25 most used government services that Government Digital Service (GDS) is moving online as part of a two-year project. The 25 services – ranging from visa applications to benefits claims to booking prison visits – were identified as exemplars that would be the first to be redeveloped under the digital by default plan. Registering to vote is the latest service which hopes to make the process simpler for citizens and save the government money. People will be able to register to vote online and on any device in three minutes by providing their name, address, date of birth and National Insurance number.

United Kingdom: US lessons for the UK government as voter registration goes digital | Diginomica

Last month we took a look at the idea of online voting in the wake of the European Union elections and a somewhat dubious critique of e-voting in Estonia. I was minded of that again today when talking to Greg Clark, Minister of State for the Cabinet Office (Cities and Constitution), as he officially launched an online overhaul of how the UK electorate goes about registering its right to vote. The current UK mechanism for this process is incredibly archaic. As things stand, the head of the household – whatever that means in this day and age! – has to fill out a paper form to send back to the local authority, specifying which members of that household are entitled to vote. Clearly this is a system that is (a) ludicrously out of touch and (b) wide open to abuse and deliberate disenfranchisement of individuals.

United Kingdom: Yes or No? Scotland is teetering on a knife-edge | Telegraph

Don’t worry, Scotland is not going to vote for independence. That is what people opposed to the idea have tended to think until now. But the Yes campaign has gained ground lately, winning hearts and minds. How is it doing that? What will happen next? And will it be enough to deliver a victory that breaks up the union? Hope Street is a neat address for a campaign that was dismissed in the beginning as a lost cause, and it is where the people running Yes Scotland have their Glasgow headquarters. They are good at symbolism. The date of the referendum was chosen to take advantage of an anticipated swelling of national pride this summer, with the Commonwealth Games to follow the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, in which Robert the Bruce gave the English a kicking.

United Kingdom: Scottish referendum groups officially confirmed by Electoral Commission | The Guardian

The Electoral Commission has officially designated the two main referendum groups Yes Scotland, which is fighting for a yes vote, and the pro-UK group Better Together as the official lead campaigns in the contest. The two groups will be allowed to spend up to £1.5m during the official 16 week campaign, which begins on 30 May, and be allowed free delivery of millions of campaign leaflets and free airtime for campaign broadcasts before the vote on 18 September. The widely anticipated confirmation came with a plea from John McCormick, the election commissioner for Scotland, for numerous smaller campaign groups expected to take an active role in the referendum to register themselves quickly.

United Kingdom: UK should consider e-voting, elections watchdog urges | The Guardian

The UK should consider allowing internet voting in elections because the current system risks appearing alien and outdated to an increasingly disenfranchised younger generation, the election watchdog has said. Launching a review of modern voting, the head of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, warned that the state of the electoral system was “not an issue that can stay on the slow track any longer”.The long-term trend of falling voter turnout was particularly marked among young people, she said.

United Kingdom: Legal bid over expats’ voting rights could delay Scottish independence referendum | Expatriate

Calls to allow expatriate Scots to vote in the upcoming referendum on independence are heating up, with legal action in the pipeline. A top lawyer has claimed that first minister Alex Salmond may have broken the law in preventing them from exercising their right to vote. Aidan O’Neill, an expert in European law, believes there is a good chance of overturning the decision in court. He has suggested that a judicial review would likely find the rights of Scottish expats to enjoy freedom of movement under EU law had been infringed. If this legal battle is won, it has the potential to add 1.15 million Scots no longer living north of the border to the voting register.

United Kingdom: Scrap postal votes or elections will be fixed, says judge | Mail Online

She said political parties should be forced to sign up to a new code of conduct, including a ban on activists handling postal ballot papers. ‘We are talking about the behaviour of unscrupulous campaigners who act in an improper way to put pressure on people,’ she said. ‘It is that behaviour that needs to be tackled. ‘You can’t punish voters for the behaviour of unscrupulous campaigners, and that’s what abolishing postal voting on demand would do.’ But others warned that further action may be needed to eradicate ballot-rigging. Returning officer Ray Morgan, chief executive of Woking Borough Council, said: ‘I don’t think any election that I’ve presided over since 2006 has been totally fair and honest.’

United Kingdom: Scrap ‘on demand’ postal voting to curb fraud, says judge | BBC

Postal voting is open to fraud on an “industrial scale” and is “unviable” in its current form, a top judge has said. Richard Mawrey QC, who tries cases of electoral fraud, told the BBC that people should not be able to apply for postal votes as a matter of course. “On demand” postal voting had not boosted turnout or simplified the process for the vulnerable, he said. But the Electoral Commission said it would not be “proportionate” to end postal voting altogether. The government also said it had no plans to abolish the current system, saying it had made it easier for many people to vote.

United Kingdom: Call for compulsory voting and votes for 16-year-olds from prominent Labour AM | Wales Online

A rising star of Welsh Labour has given his backing to extending the vote in all British elections to 16-year-olds and making voting compulsory. Cardiff South and Penarth AM Vaughan Gething, who was made a Deputy Minister in the Welsh Government in June last year, told a conference of sixth-form students at the National Assembly that he backed extending the vote and making voting mandatory. His call for 16-year-olds to vote was backed by the Welsh Government, but it rejected the suggestion of a move to compulsory voting. The right to vote has been granted to 16-year-olds in the Scottish independence referendum, which will take place in September. Asked if he was in favour of votes for 16, Mr Gething, who was representing Welsh Labour , said: “Yes, is my view. I’m in favour for votes for 16 for all elections – for local government, for the Assembly and the general election. I think it would be a positive experience to get people voting early.”

United Kingdom: No vote, no voice: Expats urged to register for European elections | Telegraph

Expats have been urged to register to vote, with less than three months left before the deadline for the European Parliamentary elections. Just a just a tiny percentage of the estimated 5.5 million British expats are currently registered. The Electoral Commission has therefore launched an international campaign via radio and social media to encourage more to sign up. An overseas registration day on Wednesday February 26 aims to achieve at least 25,000 overseas voter registration form downloads from the website www.aboutmyvote.co.uk.

United Kingdom: Expat Scots demand a vote in independence referendum | Reuters

A million Scots living outside of Scotland should be allowed to vote in a referendum this year on whether their country becomes an independent nation, one of them said on Monday as he sought backing for a legal challenge. James Wallace, a Scottish-born trainee lawyer who lives in England, is among the 1.15 million Scots who are excluded from the vote as they are not resident there. Anyone over the age of 16 living in Scotland – about 80 percent of the 5.2 million population – has the right to vote on September 18 either for independence or to remain part of the United Kingdom alongside England, Wales and Northern Ireland. That means 800,000 Scots living in the rest of the UK and others in large Scottish communities in countries such as the United States, Canada and Ireland will have no say.

United Kingdom: Voter ID proposals could put elderly off going to polls | This Is Wiltshire

Linda Petherick, South West regional organiser of the National Federation of Occupational Pensioners, said that proposals from The Electoral Commission, which would require voters to show some sort of ID at polling stations before voting, could stop the older generation from using their vote. NFOP is concerned that these proposals could create a number of potential problems, especially for older people. Mrs Petherick said: “There needs to be some clarification on how this is going to work, including what sort of ID will be accepted, as many older people do not have a photo driver ID or even a relevant passport.

United Kingdom: Voters ‘should be required to show photo ID at elections’, says watchdog | BBC

Voters should be required to show photo ID at polling stations in Great Britain to lessen the risk of fraud, the Electoral Commission has said. The elections watchdog said it planned to introduce the change in time for the 2019 local government and European Parliament elections. Although it has yet to confirm full details of the plan, it said it would be based on the Northern Ireland model, where voters already need photo ID. Campaigners No2ID condemned the plan. But Electoral Commission chairwoman Jenny Watson said most voters could use passports, driving licences or even public transport photocards to prove who they are at polling stations. Those without any of these documents could request a free elections ID card, she added.

United Kingdom: Prisoners fail to overturn ban on voting in Scottish independence referendum | theguardian.com

Three Scottish prison inmates are likely to appeal against a judge’s decision to throw out a legal challenge to Alex Salmond’s ban on inmates voting in September independence referendum. Their challenge to the blanket ban, on human rights and European law grounds, was rejected by Lord Glennie sitting in the court of session, Scotland’s civil court, in Edinburgh, on Thursday, in the first of what is expected to be a series of appeals and hearings. Tony Kelly, the lawyer for the three men – Leslie Moohan and Andrew Gillon, both serving life sentences, and Gary Gibson, serving a seven-year term – said they were disappointed at losing.

United Kingdom: Some U.K. Prisoners Should Be Allowed Vote, Panel Says | Bloomberg

U.K. prisoners serving sentences of less than a year should be given the right to vote in elections, a cross-party panel of lawmakers said today. It would be better for Britain to uphold the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights than continue to deny the vote to all prisoners regardless of length of sentence, the panel, drawn from members of both the House of Commons and the House of Lords, said in a report.Prime Minister David Cameron said in November 2010 that the thought of giving prisoners the vote made him feel “physically ill” after a ruling by the ECHR that banning prisoners from voting was incompatible with the convention.

United Kingdom: Conservatives clash over European court ruling on prisoner voting rights | The Guardian

The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, was accused by former justice minister Crispin Blunt of “setting up a crisis” over human rights in Europe when the two clashed in a Westminster committee over prisoners being allowed to vote. The public clash between two prominent Conservatives over enforcing the controversial ruling by Strasbourg judges that prisoners should be allowed to vote highlights mounting political tension within the party over the UK’s fraught relationship with Europe. In response to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision, first announced in 2005, that a blanket ban on inmates being allowed to participate in elections was illegal, the government has published a multiple choice bill with three options – one of which proposes retaining the ban and defying Strasbourg. Earlier this month, Thorbjørn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, which oversees the ECHR, warned that if the UK, a founder member of the human rights system, refused to enforce the judgment it would weaken and deprive it of any meaning.

United Kingdom: Defying Strasbourg ruling on prisoner voting rights risks anarchy, MPs told | The Guardian

The government’s chief law officer has given his strongest warning yet to MPs that refusing to comply with European human rights rulings on prisoner voting rights risks “a degree of anarchy”. The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, said the issue of giving convicted prisoners the vote was profoundly symbolic in the British debate on European human rights laws, but that it was no slight matter for Britain to be in breach of its international obligations. He made his remarks during a Westminster hearing of a joint committee of MPs and peers who were considering a draft prisoner voting bill. The meeting also heard a strong warning from Thorbjørn Jagland, secretary-general of the Council of Europe, which oversees the European human rights court at Strasbourg.

United Kingdom: Government plans to use individual voter register for 2015 election | theguardian.com

Government plans to go ahead with the next election on the basis of an individual voter register, as opposed to the current household register, have been given a boost after an experiment suggested nearly 80% of the electorate could be transferred to an individual register automatically. There were concerns the government was pressing ahead too fast and millions of voters would be disenfranchised as they failed to switch from a household register to the individual register. But a data-matching survey conducted by the Cabinet Office and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) showed that more than 35 million voters – an average of 73% – can be transferred automatically to the electoral register. This national average figure masks differences in localities, with some boroughs mainly in London likely to produce much lower levels of automatic registration. However, the Electoral Commission, who recommended individual registration in a report on Wednesday, raised concerns that students and young adults whose living situations are for more transient, could also lose out in the automatic transfer process as they were a harder group to match. The test involved the matching of all 380 electoral registers, with around 46 million people, against DWP data.

United Kingdom: Human rights commissioner says UK ‘should leave Council of Europe’ if it defies ruling on prisoner voting rights | theguardian.com

The UK should withdraw from the Council of Europe if it chooses to ignore pan-Europe judgments giving prisoners the right to vote, the continent’s most senior human rights official has warned. Niels Muižnieks, the Council of Europe’s human rights commissioner, said British MPs could not “cherry-pick” decisions issued by the European court of human rights. His comments, published in evidence to the joint Commons and Lords parliamentary committee considering the draft voting eligibility (prisoners) bill, are likely to raise the political stakes in an already inflamed confrontation that has set British ministers at odds with the Strasbourg-based European court of human rights. The court first ruled in 2005 that a blanket ban preventing all prisoners from voting in elections was incompatible with human rights.