United Kingdom: Electoral reform campaigners urge UK-wide voting for 16- and 17-year-olds | The Guardian

Electoral reform campaigners are to step up demands for 16- and 17-year-olds to be given full voting rights across the UK, after parties at Holyrood backed the measure for Scottish parliament and council elections. The Scottish parliament voted unanimously in favour of allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in local elections late on Thursday, barely 4o minutes after the Commons rejected cross-party moves to do so for the European Union referendum. Katie Ghose, chief executive of the Electoral Reform Society, said those contradictory votes by the two parliaments would increase the democratic deficit for younger voters within the UK, particularly for English and Northern Irish teenagers.

United Kingdom: Prime Minister refuses to rule out EU referendum on same day as other elections next year | The Guardian

David Cameron has left the door open for an early EU referendum to be held on the same day as other elections next year, despite Labour’s call for it to take place on a different date. At his weekly prime minister’s question time, Cameron was pressed by the acting Labour leader, Harriet Harman, to rule out holding the poll at the same time as elections for the Scottish parliament, Welsh and Northern Ireland assemblies and the London mayor in May 2016. Harman said she “strongly agreed” with the Electoral Commission that referendum polling day should not feature any other elections and urged the prime minister to agree a separate voting day.

United Kingdom: UK lawmakers back Cameron’s EU referendum plans but debate highlights risks | Reuters

Lawmakers on Tuesday backed Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan for a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, but a heated debate highlighted passions that could split his Conservative Party and re-open Scotland’s bid for independence. Cameron, seeking to put an end to a decades-old rift within his party over Britain’s place in Europe, has promised to negotiate a new settlement with Brussels and hold a referendum by the end of 2017. Voters will be asked: “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”, a choice of wording which allows the “in” campaign to brand itself as “Yes”.

United Kingdom: Prisoners may be given vote because of human rights climbdown, Tory adviser warns | Telegraph

Prisoners in Britain may be given the vote because of David Cameron’s refusal to pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights, a leading QC and adviser to the Conservative Party has warned. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, has confirmed that pulling out of the convention is not “on the table” despite objections from both Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary. Jonathan Fisher QC, who has advised the Conservatives on a British Bill of Rights to replace the Human Rights Act, said it means that when “push comes to shove” the party will have to give way to Strasbourg judges on prisoner voting.

United Kingdom: EU referendum: In-out vote in May 2016 too soon, says electoral commission | The Independent

David Cameron has been warned by Britain’s elections watchdog to avoid going for an early EU referendum because it is such an “important constitutional issue”, as Nicola Sturgeon prepares to tell the Prime Minister that Scotland will not be dragged out of Europe “against our will”. Allies of the PM are urging him to hold the vote on the same day as the local and European elections on 5 May 2016, to use the momentum for reform in Brussels and capitalise on his post-election honeymoon. But a report by the Electoral Commission warns that holding the plebiscite on the same day as other elections would confuse voters and fail to allow enough time to debate the issues of the referendum. It also says there should be a period of at least six months between the referendum legislation being finalised and the date of the poll.

United Kingdom: EU referendum voting rights will not be extended to all UK citizens living abroad | The Guardian

The government has ruled out extending the right to vote in the upcoming EU referendum to all British citizens living abroad, despite a promise made by the Conservative party chairman that it would. The EU referendum bill, which will be announced after the Queen’s speech on Wednesday, will make clear that the franchise – the people eligible to vote – will be the same as in general elections, which is adults from the age of 18, Irish and Commonwealth citizens resident in the UK, and British citizens who have lived abroad for less than 15 years.

United Kingdom: Expat vote ban lifted, but not in time for EU referendum | Telegraph

Long-term expats will have their right to vote in British and European elections restored. However, they will be unable to vote in the European referendum if they’ve lived abroad for more than 15 years. The Votes for Life Bill, announced after the Queen’s Speech today, will scrap the 15-year rule that sees expats lose their votes in UK and European parliamentary elections once they have been out of the country for that long. This had been promised by the Conservatives in their manifesto. The rule affects around one million of the five million British citizens overseas. However, Downing Street said it will remain in place for the referendum on Europe, as there is not enough time to enforce the change by the time of the vote, due by the end of 2017 at the latest.

United Kingdom: Holyrood committee backs lowering voting age | BBC

Plans to give 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote in next May’s Holyrood election have taken a step closer following backing from MSPs. A report by the Devolution Committee endorsed the change laid down in the Scottish Election (Reduction of Voting Age) Bill. Last year’s referendum saw those aged 16 and 17 being allowed to vote. The committee report followed months of evidence gathering, including from young people themselves. It is expected that the bill will be passed by Holyrood in time for the Scottish Parliament election.

United Kingdom: Online voting is convenient, but if the results aren’t verifiable it’s not worth the risk | The Conversation

In one of the most fiercely contested elections in years, the turnout of the 2015 British general election was still stubbornly low at 66.1% – only a single percentage point more than in 2010, and still around 10 points lower than the ranges common before the 1990s. There has been all manner of hand-wringing about how to improve voter engagement and turnout. Considering the huge range of things we now do online, why not voting too? A Lodestone political survey suggested that 60% of respondents said they would vote if they could do so online, and this rose to around 80% among those aged 18-35. As recently as this year, the speaker of the House of Commons called for a secure online voting system by 2020. But designing a secure way to vote online is hard. An electronic voting system has to be transparent enough that the declared outcome is fully verifiable, yet still protect the anonymity of the secret ballot in order to prevent the possibility of voter coercion.

United Kingdom: Why can’t the UK vote online? The answer is simple – we fail at passwords | Information Age

In an age where so many of us handle our banking, tax returns and bill paying online, many have asked why can’t we cast a vote via the internet as well? Last year, over eight in ten (83%) of UK adults were active online – just imagine if we saw this sort of turnout for 2020’s election. However, moving voting online has its own risks as well. And much of this is down to poor password security. Much of this insecurity is rooted in existing Electronic Voting Machines – or EVMs – which are already in use throughout the world. India, for example, adopted EVMs for its 2004 parliamentary elections, with 380 million voters casting their ballots on more than a million machines. In the United States, push button or touchscreen style EVMs have been used regularly since 1976. However, across the world, EVMs have been roundly criticized for being susceptible to hacking and fraud. In India, It was successfully demonstrated that the 2009 election victory of the Congress Party of India could easily have been rigged – forcing the election commission to review the current EVMs.

United Kingdom: Conservative win means end in sight for 15 year expat voting limit | The Connexion

A Conservative victory at the UK general elections means the UK will now be expected to hold to a pledge to end the 15-year limit on the expat vote. That was one of the party’s main promises to Britons overseas, and it was the only party to offer it unequivocally. However, the Conservatives will also now be expected to follow through with another policy likely to divide expats much more – an in/out referendum on the EU, by the end of 2017. The party has not clarified if it would give the vote back to long-term expats in time to take part in it.

United Kingdom: Left-wing and right-wing parties unite in call for a fairer voting system | The Independent

Parties from across Britain’s political spectrum have called for reform of Britain’s electoral system in the wake of a highly disproportionate election result that ignored the preferences of a large chunk voters. Ukip, the Green Party, and the Liberal Democrats all won 12 per cent, 8 per cent and 4 per cent of votes respectively in Thursday’s election – but none ended up with much more than 1 per cent of the seats. “We have a deeply unfair electoral system,” Green Party leader Natalie Bennett told the BBC.

United Kingdom: Election glitches leave some unable to vote | The Guardian

Dozens of people planning to vote in the closest election for decades were turned away from polling stations on Thursday morning. Voters in parts of east London and Dorset were told that IT glitches meant they were not registered on the electoral roll, despite many having polling cards. Meanwhile, some Britons who live abroad have complained that postal votes have arrived too late to guarantee they can exercise their democratic rights. In Hackney, where at least 30 people queued to complain outside the town hall, Alix Rowe was one of those left disenfranchised by the problems. The 23-year-old, who works in fashion PR, registered to vote before the deadline but did not receive a polling card. Knowing that it was not necessary to have a polling card, she went to two local polling stations but was told her name was not registered and they could not help her.

United Kingdom: Five million votes but just two seats. UKIP and Green set to campaign for electoral reform | Yorkshire Post

The Greens and Ukip have formed an unlikely alliance to demand electoral reform after their parties polled almost five million votes between them but won just one seat each. Ukip leader Nigel Farage joined in the criticism, eventually pledging that his party would lead the reform before he discovered this morning that he had failed to oust the Conservatives in the South Thanet seat. He said: “There’ll be lost and lots of Ukip voters out there very angry that they are not going to be represented and I think our system is bust.

United Kingdom: With election race tight, Britons turn to vote-swapping strategy | The Globe and Mail

Amy Herbert has never met Robert Knight, but on Thursday she will go to a polling station in southwest England and – acting against her own political beliefs – cast a ballot for Mr. Knight’s preferred party, the Liberal Democrats. She’ll do so trusting that Mr. Knight, an ordinary voter like her, will reciprocate by marking his own ballot for the party she really supports, the Labour Party, in his own constituency. Thursday’s election in the United Kingdom is unlike any of those held before it. Every polling firm says the result is too close to call, and a hung Parliament is considered all but a certainty. At the end of an almost six-week campaign, few were daring Wednesday to predict what the country’s next government will look like. With the race so tight, voters are being pressured to vote tactically – that is, to cast their ballots with one eye on the candidates in their local constituencies, and the other on the big picture of how the each race could affect who becomes prime minister.

United Kingdom: Thousands of pensioners unable to cast votes in scandalous mix-up over registration | The National

A new voting scandal has emerged which means that thousands of vulnerable pensioners in care homes across Scotland could be denied their right to vote in today’s General Election. The new registration system, brought in the day after the independence referendum, banned block voting which means that the elderly and frail being looked after in nursing homes had to register individually for the first time, particularly those who require a postal vote. However, The National can reveal that there are older people who are still waiting for their postal vote months after the deadline, and that the problem is said to be far-reaching. Scottish cabinet minister Alex Neil warned that this was just be the tip of the iceberg, and expressed concern that the problem was “widespread”. He called on the Electoral Commission to investigate the scandal and ensure pensioners in nursing homes are registered to vote in time for the Scottish Parliament elections next year because it was too late now to “sort out the mess” in time for the General Election.

United Kingdom: Expats in uproar over missing ballot papers ahead of Thursday’s poll | Telegraph

British expats around the world have complained that they’ve not received their ballot papers in time for their postal votes to count in Thursday’s general election. Reports from as far afield as France, Brazil and the United States emerged this week of the problem, which has left expats “damn cheesed off” according to one campaigner. Brian Cave, 82, who has lived in south eastern France for 17 years, runs a blog focusing on expat voting rights.

United Kingdom: General Election 2015 explained: Voting | The Independent

Most people who vote in tomorrow’s general election will vote in person, in one of around 40,000 polling stations that will be open from 7am to 10pm. All voters should have received a poll card no less than a week before election day. You should present this at the polling station when you vote. Each voter is then given a ballot paper on which to mark their vote. The paper bears an alphabetical list of all the candidates standing in that constituency. In addition to your elector number, your ballot paper will carry an “official mark” which should be visible from both sides of the paper. This will usually be stamped with a special instrument immediately before it is given to you; but some papers may have a pre-printed mark or barcode instead.

United Kingdom: With campaign spending limited, UK politicians vie to be ‘liked’ and ‘retweeted’ | New York Times

There is no political advertising on television or radio in Britain. Fund-raising and spending are strictly limited. Tight elections can turn on a relative handful of votes in a small number of competitive parliamentary constituencies. So as Britain’s political parties head into a tight, unpredictable election on Thursday, they are even more reliant than their American counterparts on social media as a way to mobilize supporters for a last push and disseminate their messages directly to voters. Social media makes up for “that small difference of being that tiny bit marginally better than the other party,” said Anthony Wells, director of political and social opinion polling at YouGov, a prominent polling company here. Digital technology also helps parties winnow undecided voters from the rest of the electorate, he said.

United Kingdom: British expats feel neglected, but will it show at the ballot box? | The Conversation

In elections that are too close to call, every vote counts. With a likely low margin between the two main parties in the UK election, the vote of British expats may suddenly become more important than before. Indeed, David Cameron declared at the end of 2014 that the expat vote “could hold the key to the election”. And yet, you’d have to be listening very hard to spot a single reference to expat voters in this election campaign. It’s not hard to figure out why. Historically, British citizens living abroad have always had very low rates of registration and participation, and they still do; Sam Gyimah, minister for the constitution, has claimed in parliament that overseas electors are some of the least represented on the electoral register. As a result, politicians have generally been able to comfortably ignore expats altogether. Only recently have they starting to pay more attention – and it’s still not much.

United Kingdom: The North Koreans voting in their first democratic election – in Britain | The Guardian

Millions of people will be voting for the first time when Britain goes to the polls next week, but none of them have quite the same story to tell as 72-year-old Park Seong-cheo. Park is a North Korean defector living in London who received his British citizenship two months ago in time for the election. He says that because of the language barrier he is relying on South Korean television for most of his news about the campaigns. “The concept of voting is unfamiliar to me,” says Park, who has lived in the UK for eight years. Another first-time democratic voter Jihyun Park says she has been taken back by the variety of policies in the campaign manifestos. She has been following the TV debates and says her personal priorities are refugees and tuition fees. Her eldest son is set to go to university next year.

United Kingdom: Security concerns prevent UK adopting electronic voting for the General Election | Mirror

As the country readies itself to trek down to the polling stations on May 7, some voters are questioning why they can’t simply cast their vote online. After all, many of us handle our banking, tax returns and bill paying online, so why shouldn’t we be able to cast a vote over the internet as well? Parts of the process have already made the transition to a digital environment. In preparation for next month’s election, the Electoral Commission launched an online registration scheme allowing all of us to quickly and efficiently register to vote. And putting the service online meant that many more people used it. According to the Electoral Commission’s statistics, over one million applications were made on the site over the first three-and-a-half weeks. But registering to vote and actually putting the mark next to your party of choice are two different things.

United Kingdom: How feasible would it be to introduce online voting? | BBC

People can shop, date and bank online. How feasible would it be to allow internet voting at the general election? Imagine democracy had just been invented. Would the UK government decide to set up 50,000 polling stations on Thursday 7 May? Or would the vote be taking place online instead? Until the 1870s those people allowed to vote did so openly with no privacy. The 1872 Ballot Act changed this with the invention of the “modern” polling station – the church hall with its wooden booths, a pencil on string and piles of ballot papers handed out by earnest election workers. Since then the way we vote has hardly changed. Today people shop, find a partner and bank online. Surely voting online is possible? The government says not. In January, Sam Gyimah, the constitution minister, told the House of Commons: “I feel [that] moving to electronic voting would be a huge task for any government. We can’t be under any illusion that this would be easy to achieve.” Remote voting was “incredibly rare” around the world and would require a “very robust and secure” system, Gyimah said.

United Kingdom: Almost half a million people register to vote on final day | The Guardian

Almost half a million voters registered in the final hours before the deadline to participate in the 7 May UK general election, the vast majority of them young people. More than 485,000 people registered to vote online on Monday, with 16,000 paper applications made. According to figures from Gov.uk’s voter registration site, thousands left their registration until the last minute – quite literally. The Electoral Commission data shows that more than 3,700 people were accessing the service at 11.59pm on Monday night. Spikes from Monday evening saw more than 18,000 people accessing the site at certain times.

United Kingdom: Does ‘vote swapping’ work? | BBC

Vote-swapping websites seem to be gaining traction on social media. But what makes people swap votes, and will it really make a difference to the election result? Jodie Holland and Dr Tim Killeen don’t know each other. But they’ve made a pact. On 7 May, they will walk into polling stations in different constituencies and vote for the party the other wants to win. In doing so, both believe it will boost the chances of the party they want in power.

United Kingdom: Record-breaking day sees 470k register to vote online | Wired UK

Nearly half a million people registered to vote for the 2015 general election as the deadline closed yesterday, smashing the previous single-day 24 hour record by more than 300,000 people. A total of 469,047 people used the online system to add their name to the electoral roll with a further 15,965 people registering by post. The last-minute rush saw a record-breaking day for voter registrations — the previous record for single-day sign-ups was 166,000 on 5 February 2015.

United Kingdom: Government aims to boost voting turnout with Twitter reminders | ITProPortal

In an aim to boost the number of voters before the registration closes on 20 April, UK’s Electoral Commission has began to tap Twitter as a new medium, reminding people to register to vote in the General Election. The commission, through Twitter, sends a reminder to users in the UK through their timelines, stating the remaining seven-day timeframe to register. It also provides a link with the hashtag #RegisterToVote. The Electoral Commission also sent a tweet that provided a link to to the GOV.UK website, which provides additional information on online registration.

United Kingdom: One million go online to register to vote | BBC

More than one million people have gone online to register to vote in the space of just over three weeks, the Electoral Commission has said. Most of the applications were from young people, with peaks coinciding with the start of the campaign period and the televised leaders’ debate. A further 100,000 applications have been made on paper since 16 March, the commission says. … Some of these applications would have been made by people already registered to vote, the Electoral Commission said, so it was not expecting to add another one million people to the electoral register.

United Kingdom: Expat standing in general election to highlight vote ban injustice | Telegraph

James Jackson, 71, does not have the right to vote in the UK, having become a victim of the rule preventing Britons from voting at home once they’ve been out of the country for 15 years. However, nothing in law stops him standing as a Parliamentary candidate in the general election, so he plans to throw his hat in the ring as a candidate for the safe Tory seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. In an interview with the getwestlondon news website, Mr Jackson said: “This Kafkaesque situation means that, theoretically, I could win a parliamentary seat and take my place in the House of Commons, despite living abroad and not having a vote.” The website reported that Mr Jackson formerly lived in Colwyn Bay, North Wales, working as treasurer of the former Colwyn Borough Council. He left the UK in 1996 to work as an internal auditor/treasurer for the Falkland Islands government and later retired to live in Narbonne, southern France.

United Kingdom: E-voting is increasingly on the cards, but reformers remain sceptical | Computer Business Review

As the short campaign of the this year’s general election begins apace, technologists and electoral reformers are wondering whether this will be the last time the country goes to the polls without access to some form of online voting. Back in January the House of Commons speaker John Bercow again raised the possibility that the next election, expected in 2020 now that parliament has a five-year fixed term, could be the first in which citizens can vote online. Experiments in other countries have led some to question the wisdom of such a move. Having worked as an election official in the 2008 US presidential election, Paco Hope, principal consultant at software security firm Cigital, warns that fraud could rise if the technology is implemented. “I’m not sure that you can secure it,” he says, arguing that the voting process could be hijacked by hackers. “We can’t make websites that are resistant to the type of attacks that target an election.”