On 18th December Mary Pitcaithly, the Chief Counting Officer, and Ian Milton, the Chair of the Scottish Assessors Association (SAA) Electoral Registration Committee, were questioned for an hour by the Scottish Parliament’s Devolution (Further Powers) Committee. The obscure question in…
Yearly Archives: 2014
Problems with appointing Emergency Proxies in the Scottish Referendum
Posted in referendum Tagged with: electoral commission, emergency proxy votes, Lewis Macdonald, scottish independence referendum, Scottish Parliament
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Electoral Commission Confirm That Police Are Still Investigating Postal Vote Sampling
The Scottish Independence Referendum Act requires the Electoral Commission to lay a report before the Scottish Parliament “on the conduct of the referendum”. This report was laid with the Parliament today. The Act is vague about what the report should…
Posted in postal voting Tagged with: electoral commission, humza yousaf, postal vote counting, postal votes, ruth davidson
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Update on Postal Vote Counting Investigation
After a minor flurry of interest around Ruth Davidson’s referendum night admission on BBC television that Better Together were counting samples of postal votes and her subsequent interview by the police, the story has gone completely dead in the media.…
Posted in postal voting Tagged with: crown office, electoral commission, police scotland, scottish independence referendum act
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John McTernan of Labour joins the premature enumeration club
John McTernan, Labour strategist and globe-trotting organiser, on Sunday Politics, BBC1, 14th September implying that Better Together had been counting postal votes during the initial opening of the envelopes. I am starting to think that hardly anyone watches politics programmes…
Posted in commentariat, postal voting Tagged with: john mcternan, postal votes, scottish independence referendum, scottish referendum
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Humza Yousaf Implies that Yes Scotland were also counting postal votes ahead of the count.
Spotted a tweet from @neiledwardlovat pointing out that at 00:32 on BBC1 UK on the night of the referendum, Humza Yousaf implies that Yes Scotland were also sampling postal votes. As I alluded to in a recent post about Ruth…
Posted in commentariat, postal voting Tagged with: humza yousaf, postal ballots, postal vote counting, scottish independence referendum
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The Defamation of Ruth Davidson?
On Monday I posted about Ruth Davidson’s comments on the counting of postal votes, posted a video of the comments on Youtube, made a complaint to Police Scotland, emailed the Electoral Management Board Scotland and emailed the Electoral Commission. Having…
Posted in commentariat, postal voting Tagged with: postal vote counting, ruth davidson, scottish independence referendum
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Electoral Management Board for Scotland (EMB)
The Electoral Management Board for Scotland (EMB) is a very odd public sector organisation, whose self-proclaimed prime focus is “ensuring that the interests of the voter are kept at the centre of all elections planning and administration”. EMB coordinated the…
Posted in commentariat, postal voting Tagged with: electoral management board, postal vote counting, ruth davidson, scottish independence referendum
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Better Together’s Illegal Counting of Postal Votes
On election night Ruth Davidson admitted that Better Together were centrally monitoring the postal votes as they were being opened in the weeks leading up to election day. With 18% of votes posted in, access to this information is strategically…
Posted in commentariat, postal voting Tagged with: better together, postal vote counting, postal votes, ruth davidson, scottish independence referendum
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Referendum Attitudes and Religious Identity
The historian Tom Nairn famously said that Scotland will be free “when the last minister is strangled by the last copy of the Sunday Post“. The significance of religious identity has played little part in the referendum debate or even…
The Normalisation of Deviance
Whether there was or was not widespread counting of the breakdown of postal votes in the referendum, why has it suddenly become acceptable for politicians to admit that the practice is going on? The increasing number of postal votes and…