Polling Question

sidthesexist · 4 Jun 2009 at 08:39

Just been and voted, as soon as I walked into the polling office I was confronted by two of the candidates who demanded my polling card number (not the officials who hand out the voting papers) has any one else had this? and what would they need my polling card number for?

Jono · 4 Jun 2009 at 08:45

To tell you which polling station you should be using?

They'd printed all of our station numbers incorrectly.

VoG · 4 Jun 2009 at 08:45

A: they want it to confirm who's voted.
B: you don't have to give it if you don't want to. ( to non officials that is ).

scorza · 4 Jun 2009 at 08:48

They are party activists (who I thought were banned from entering the polling station). You don't have to show them your polling card. They do it so they know who has voted so that if the election result looks like it's going to be close, they can get more people (who have said they are going to vote for their party but haven't voted) down to the polling station.

IMO you only have to look at how closely the three main parties work together on this to know that there is something rotten at the heart of British politics.

sidthesexist · 4 Jun 2009 at 08:51

VoG said:
A: they want it to confirm who's voted.
B: you don't have to give it if you don't want to. ( to non officials that is ).

A. is that any business of the candidates?

B. the way they jumped out in front of you and demanded it made it sound as though it was an official demand.

The thing i want to make sure though is that there is no way they can use this polling card number to gerimander any of the results?

sidthesexist · 4 Jun 2009 at 08:53

scorza said:
IMO you only have to look at how closely the three main parties work together on this to know that there is something rotten at the heart of British politics.

yeah these were Tory and Lib Dems candidates (the lib dem originally stood as a tory before flipping to labour when they came to power then flipped to lib dems last year when brown crashed in the poll's)

scorza · 4 Jun 2009 at 08:58

sidthesexist said:
A. is that any business of the candidates?

B. the way they jumped out in front of you and demanded it made it sound as though it was an official demand.

The thing i want to make sure though is that there is no way they can use this polling card number to gerimander any of the results?

No they don't use the information for illegal purposes. They have a list of people who they think are going to vote for them. If the election looks like it's going to be close, they check to see if these people have voted, if not then they start hassling them to vote - phone them up, call them cabs to the polling station or whatever.

Agree that they do trick people into showing their polling card by making it sound official, but that's not illegal.

Cosimo · 4 Jun 2009 at 09:06

We get this happening at all elections, it just party activists, I just ignore them.

sidthesexist · 4 Jun 2009 at 09:14

simulatorman said:
it just party activists,

As i said above these were both candidates

http://www.wycombe.gov.uk/councillorPages.asp?contentID=71&categoryID=3727

That was one of them

and the second candidate down on this list is the other

http://www.conservatives.com/Get_involved/Become_a_Councillor/Councillor_Biographies.aspx

Cosimo · 4 Jun 2009 at 09:21

sidthesexist said:
As i said above these were both candidates

When I say activists that also includes candidates, as I said, outside our polling station they all get ignored.