...about electoral fraud.
Not that audit is about fraud. And not that I have any specific work-based knowledge. Nor active politics based knowledge.
But as an accountant specialising in audit I know a few things about risk, risk appetite, systems controls and system weaknesses.
Electoral fraud. Big news this year. Personally, I've always enjoyed the Irish philosophy - The armalite not the ballot Vote early vote often. And you'd better believe the number of general and other elections in which I have been able to exercise that - legitimately, of course, through properly authorised proxy voting.
If you look at it the whole process is redolent with scope for fraud. It suits the Evening Standard to have billboards 'saying Shock! Horror!'. They had three different headlines billboarded at Oxford Circus last night, each of them designed to make people feel worried. It sells newspapers.
The key to voting is getting on the electoral register. You can put any name on and it doesn't get checked. In any other election - not this one, I've no been canvassing - I have encountered at least one example of toddlers with votes. (Incidentally, people often omit children under the age of one from the census).
I got my credit reference data subject access report in 1993 and found that i was on the electoral register for Southend East for the 1992 election. I voted in Streatham. I could have voted in Southend. I didn't and it would have been illegal. But it would have been possible. Noone would have cross-checked. Perhaps someone used my polling card to vote Tory (oh, the irony...) When you moved house did you tell the Local Authority to remove you from the electoral register? I never did!
Have you ever got polling cards for people who have moved away? I certainly did for the person who used to own this house before I did in the 1997 election. She lives in what was Clapham Park now Clapham Common ward, so I could have voted with her card. Or got a non-councillor comrade from a different polling district to do it. It's hard for councillors or ex-councillors to impersonate - they're known by polling staff.
A black man told me a story about another part of London he had lived where a black man said "Give me a list of all the black men who have died. You white people can't tell us apart, so I'll vote on their behalf."
You don't need a polling card to vote. Just a name and address.You don't have to provide proof at any stage of the process.
And so it has been for years. Personally, I have never committed electoral fraud nor known of anyone doing so. But any one who has ever thought about the system recognises that it has very many flaws. We've put up with it for this long, perhaps because we don't know the full extent, perhaps we figure it all balances in the end, or because, like benefits, you have to tolerate a high fraud rate if you make the benefit accessible.
It's only fairly recently that we have collectively thought about Identity Fraud. Perhaps through naivety. It's not so long ago that a baptismal certificate - blank ones available from the Catholic Truth Society - was sufficient proof of ID, creating entitlement to benefits. It's only extremely recently that a passport signatory has had to give their passport number. Someone I know says they forged the counter-signature. I don't think they had any nefarious intentions, just couldn't be bothered to get a proper person to do it. I took the piss, of course - I was a proper person!
A passport is a way to access all sorts of benefits and services. Nowadays you can't open a bank account without one. I got a bank account long before I got a passport. I don't think I even needed a birth certificate.
For years people have been obtaining birth certificates and thus passports in the names of 'dead babies'. It's only very recently that Registered births and deaths have been computerised and matchable.
ID theft is expensive to the nation and distressing to individuals - parents of dead babies who suddenly get landed with an arrest warrant or credit card bill, or individuals who find they are repeatedly turned down for jobs because someone has used their ID to get treatment for heroin addiction. A teenager I know slightly couldn't get a passport to go on holiday - at short notice - because somebody had already got one in her name.
So my point is - electoral fraud is nothing new, and will continue until and unless we agree to a means to prove identity, to prevent multiple registering.
A couple of us discussed postal voting at the last election but then realised that the polling station is nearer than the post box!
Note to self - take photo of 'Please do not park outside our school' signs tomorrow!
