In our valiant battle to save our fragile Democracy from inextricably morphing into the ‘Dominicracy,’ controlled by eugenicist, Herd Nerd Cummings manipulating our narcissistic part-time PM, Boris ‘Man-Baby’ Johnson through authoritarian chaos, we have not a second to lose between now and crash-out Brexit. In my latest Internet search, prompted by Twitter contact names sent to me by Ell, I just found a rather incriminating video clip of an iphone recording posted by “For The Many” with a dig at the Dom, “You can’t amend your wife’s appearance on Radio 4 though,” dated 25/04/2020. Cummings’s wife wrote an article pretending they had never left London; she also made a deceptive fiction fantasy broadcast. Her portrayal of how dutiful domestic bliss with husband Dominic was marred by Covid 19, is an elaborate fabrication as she fails to mention that exhausting 260 mile road trip to Durham! Cummings broke the rules, he lied to the press and he then tried to trick us all into accepting his offence: he needs to go ASAP and can he please take this corrupt Tory Government out with him!
Clifton – A batch of data is on its way… Thanks to Ell who sent the following really useful Links. The first Link takes you to the site: “Git Hub” for data posted by Alex Stacey who was right on the case sending out FOI Requests in December. Although he is not still actively collecting data, Stacey has made his work available for others to pick up right where he left off. I am contemplating two things, firstly can somebody make contact with Alex Stacey via Twitter and secondly is he still receiving FOI data even though he has stopped sending out requests? Once FOI has received the information requested it is in the public domain and we should still be able to access other data that is sent to him; it would help if he could give us a heads up when new data is available. Listed as, “Postal Vote Data from the 2019 General Election - obtained with Freedom of Information Requests.” Stacey wrote, “Note: This isn’t being worked on any more. If you want to build on the data, just fork this repo and go ahead.”
He went on to modestly explain, “There has been some interest in postal vote data from the General Election in December 2019 so I started compiling some of it via Freedom Of Information requests. It’s far from complete (there’s data for about 160 of the 650 constituencies currently) but I’m publishing it in case it is of use to any researchers or other interested people or in case people want to help compiling it. Some of the data is messy and hard to process. I’ve done my best but it’s a work in progress and I don’t make any guarantees that it’s free of errors. I welcome contributions from anyone that wants to help by adding or checking data.” He goes onto post Links directly to the accumulated data saying, “The data can be viewed here or downloaded here;” I have imbedded both of the Links. The data could set us free; I will leave the number crunching in Clifton’s capable hands.
On the 31st of January Alex Stacey posted an Article on Medium entitled, “Was the Postal Vote for GE2019 Rigged? Here’s the data” described as, “A story about conspiracy theories, freedom of information, elections, and British democracy.” In the article Stacey explains, “I heard about anomalies and apparent prior knowledge of postal vote results. The Electoral Commission were not able to answer my questions. So I sent 300 Freedom of Information requests to local councils and have been compiling basic postal vote data here. There is huge variation in how different constituencies run the vote; I’ve had written admission of rule breaking. The system is wide open to abuse and we shouldn’t accept the lax and haphazard way our elections are observed. It’s also unclear what role private companies play in assisting elections.”
Stacey took note of the inappropriate announcements made by Laura Kuennsberg and Tory MP Raab regarding the postal vote that they should not have had or shared knowledge of according to Electoral Commission’s rules. In the piece he writes that he of the explanation given for this, “Apparently, in most constituencies, observers attend the postal vote opening event and they try to see the results of the ballots and tally them, then they report the info back to HQ. This practice is forbidden in the official rules. The ballots are supposed to be face down and no tallying is allowed, but apparently is standard wide-spread practice. And nobody seems to care.” It is simply amazing that so many of the public are gullible enough to have accepted that these ‘observers,’ under the watchful eye of Returning Officers throughout the country, have universally agree to break the law knowing that any person not in agreement with this would risk them being prosecuted and facing a possible jail sentence!
Stacey looked at Lord Ashcroft’s stats based on a poll that appeared to show a dramatic increase in the postal vote, “from 17% of the vote in 2017 to 38% of the total vote in 2019.” There has been scepticism over the accuracy of that poll and we can only know the true numbers by making these FOI requests because the Electoral Commission will not publish data until later in the year. What motivated Stacey to take a closer look at the postal votes? Probably the troubling information about the extent of outsourcing of Postal Vote Management to Idox and their subsidiary Halarose, that was acquired just before the Covert 2019 Rigged Election and dissolved shortly after the vote, plus the potential conflict of interest of Tory MP Peter Lilley due to his ties to Idox. He claimed, “I wrote to IDOX asking for more info on their role in the election. They didn’t reply.”
He would not be alone in assuming that the appropriate place to target with his first ever Freedom of Information request regarding election results would be the Electoral Commission asking; I am sure many other people have made the same mistake. Despite their speedy reply he admits being baffled when the redirected him to contact his local authority. I too was totally astounded when the person I called at the Electoral Commission was unable to tell me which constituencies in the UK outsource electoral services and what private companies were involved. How could the Electoral Commission possibly claim to protect the integrity of our votes if they didn’t even know who was handling the ballots? As Stacey put it, “The organisation that oversees the fairness of elections don’t have the postal vote count data available. If there was massive abuse of the postal vote, they would have no idea at this stage that it happened.” I say, “A Watchdog that cannot watch is just a dog!” We really need to “Rescue our Watchdog!”
Stacey goes on to detail his personal efforts and the specific questions he asked of the 300 local councils he targeted with FOI requests. He wanted answers to four questions: “How many people were registered to vote by post in your constituency? How many postal votes were received? How many postal votes were marked as invalid? What was the result of the postal vote by party?” He reported that within the standard 20 day time frame many councils had responded so he had, “managed to get the numbers for about half of the 650 constituencies in the UK.” It should be of public concern that according to Stacey, “Some councils (around 10%) refused to provide the info, stating that the Electoral Officer is not bound by FOI.” The convoluted excuse for this shocking lack of transparency is an utter disgrace to our democracy; he was told that, “a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act as the Electoral Registration Officer’s role falls outside of the legislation.”
These opaque councils should be named and shamed for the devious explanation used to justify their non-compliance. Stacey revealed what they wrote, “The registration of electors is governed by the Representation of the People Act 1983 as amended. Under Section 8 of the Act, the council must appoint an officer of the council to be the registration officer for any constituency or part of a constituency coterminous with or situated in the council’s area. Any appointment as Electoral Registration Officer is separate to any other appointment and, although appointed by the council, the Electoral Registration Officer’s responsibilities and duties are personal. ‘An example of this is that the register of electors is deemed to be the property of the Electoral Registration Officer, not the local authority. The Electoral Registration Officer does not carry out the duties on behalf of the local authority but in his own personal capacity’.”
What this effectively means is that your council tax is being used to pay for your personal data to be entrusted to an unaccountable private individual for whom there is no oversight or recourse. Surely this represents a clear violation of the data protection laws in this country and it should be challenged. The trouble is that too many people are prepared to accept the increasing Government divestment to unaccountable private companies and individuals so when a FOI request for public information like this receives this type of brick wall reply the scrutiny goes no further. The rush to privatize everything has created the ultimate utopia for the wealthy elite under a Tory Government as we are denied access to the inner workings of core services that used to be accountable to the public. It facilitated the deniability that will probably see no one charged with corporate manslaughter for the sickening death toll at Grenfell Tower and absolve the Government of responsibility for stripping away the safety regulations that would have saved lives.
Stacey noted that, “About 13% (39 in total) failed to reply to the FOI in the given time,” which makes me wonder if there are any further replies containing data, that arrived after he had completed the data sheets posted online, that we might still gain access to? There may be some confusion over his understanding of what constitutes an invalid vote and at what point it is deemed invalid. Understandably confused by the discovery that, for some truly inexplicable reason, postal votes are mixed in with regular ballots before the count, he relays how certain councils, “…go through the postal votes to remove invalid ones before they are mixed with the others. Everyone seems to do it a bit differently.” There are actually two points where a ballot can be rendered invalidity; the first is when outer envelope “B” is opened and the voter’s details are checked to see if everything is correct for that ballot envelope to be included in the count. The second shouldn’t occur during an opening session as ballots are not allowed to be examined, but spoiled ballots are discovered on the night of the count.
Stacey’s questions had been framed before he learned of the regulation on mixing the ballots so he did not gain access to the results obtained by each party within the postal votes. This is such a counter-productive rule that deliberately precludes being able to gain a comprehensive assessment of potential industrial scale fraud within our voting system that this well recognized flaw should have been eliminated over a decade ago when Craig Murray highlighted it in his Article in the Guardian. In light of these facts Stacey was surprised to receive, “this reply: Wyre Forest Freedom of Information, Worcestershire Regulatory Services” sent on the 10th of January 2020 his first three questions on the numbers were answered as follows: “A: 12,733; B: 11,152; C: 325.” When he read the result of the Party breakdown as, “D: Davis — Green Party — 492,Garnier — Conservative Party — 7342; Lunn — Labour Party — 1710; Miah — Liberal Democrat — 1224; Rejected — 51” he concluded that “…so at least some of them count the postal votes before mixing them. This is clearly against the rules published by the Electoral Commission.”
Stacey deduced that, “It’s clear that Lord Ashcroft’s figure of 38% postal vote is not representative. Some are high — as high as 55% of the total vote — and some are as low as 10%.” However, he was concerned over the mixing of votes saying of the crucial party breakdown within the postal votes, “we don’t know the counts in the postal vote.” He went on to elaborate on the implications of that in the most extreme case, “So, in a constituency that had 55% of the total vote by post, if somehow every single vote was for one party, we would never actually know that. Nor would the Electoral Commission. At this point, I’m wondering if the Electoral Commission actually have any sort of clue about what’s going on. I suspect their roll is less about overseeing elections, and more about reassuring the public that they are overseeing elections.”
Stacey concluded by sharing his other concerns about the UK Electoral system’s serious flaws that, in his opinion, potentially had a far greater impact on the legitimacy of the Governance of our country; they included Gerrymandering of constituency boundaries, media manipulation and our unelected House of Lords. All very valid points that do not negate the importance of demanding a full investigation that might expose Industrial scale fraud in the Covert 2019 Rigged Election. He was obviously disillusioned by what he had discovered, commenting that, “But the fact that the oversight of the actual voting process is so lax, and that someone like me with no political background can spend a few hours sending out emails and find clear evidence of rule-breaking — and rule-breaking that the Electoral Commission is unlikely to even find or report, is worrying and points to a need for better observation and more transparent management of our elections if we’re going to continue to tell ourselves that we live in a democracy.”
In disgust Stacey noted, “Don’t follow me if you want more political writings, because I’m done with it. …but politics can jog on.” In the information sent by Ell she highlighted another website suggesting a search on “What Do They Know” where she said “FOI requests re postal votes turned up 179+ results. There will be many more as I know Alex did 450 or more so it may be that the search term will need to be changed ‘postal voting’ Ge2019 stats etc.” When I visited the Link I discovered that there were a large number of FOI requests made regarding the results of the EU Referendum as well as the Covert 2019 Rigged Election, but this data may reveal equally damaging fraud as well. I have started fishing around the Twitter posts to find further indications of political disenchantment and activism; the data collectors are still out there, but hard to locate unless you know how to navigate the site. We cannot afford to be complacent; we must not move on: I’ve gone fishing…