HOW LABOUR STEALS WOMENS’ VOTES
From the Birmingham Post. Postal ballot means Asian women miss out on vote, says Salma Yaqoob
Postal voting is robbing Asian women of the right to take part in democracy, a Birmingham councillor has warned.
Salma Yaqoob (Respect, Sparkbrook) called for a return to the traditional system of voting at polling stations, as she was appointed an advisor to the Government on encouraging more black and Asian women to become involved in politics.
Coun Yaqoob is to be the West Midlands representative on a taskforce designed to find ways of making councils more representative of the communities they serve.
But Ministers also announced that they have ruled out controversial ethnic minority shortlists for Parliamentary elections.
Labour’s Deputy Leader, Harriet Harman, had been pushing for all black and Asian shortlists to get more ethnic minority MPs in the House of Commons, following the introduction of all-women shortlists before the 1997 election.
The proposal, which would require a change in the law, had been highly controversial and opposed by Labour MPs including Sion Simon (Lab Erdington), Khalid Mahmood (Lab Perry Barr) and Roger Godsiff (Lab Sparkbrook & Small Heath).
Ms Harman told the House of Commons: “The Government does not consider that the time is right to take legislative measures to permit all Black and Asian and minority ethnic election shortlists.”
However, the taskforce would help make local authorities more representative, she said.
“Empowering black, Asian and minority ethnic women in public life is a key priority for Government. They are a force for good within their communities, and in building bridges between communities. Their contribution must be better recognised and supported.
Only around 168 out of 20,000 councillors are black, Asian or minority ethnic women. This is less than one per cent, even though they make up more than five per of the general population.
Coun Yaqoob said she welcomed the opportunity to take part in the taskforce. She said: “I know the barriers I have faced myself and anything that helps Black, Asian and minority ethnic women to take part at this level is important.”
But she said one of the first changes the Government should make was to scrap rules which allow anyone to demand a postal voting form. Before this, postal votes were only provided in exceptional circumstances.
Some critics have warned that this may allow family members or community leaders to dictate how others vote.
Coun Yaqoob said: “A particular issue I want to raise is postal voting on demand. I want to call for it to be scrapped.
“Thousands of Asian women have been denied secret ballots and thousands of ballots have been stolen.”
She said she had experienced pressure from within the Asian community not to stand as a councillor.
“There were people saying it wasn’t the job of a woman to be doing this,” she added.
But she had experienced no overt racism when she stood as a councillor, she said.
“There are misconceptions. People assume you are only interested in representing part of the community and you have to tell them you want to represent the whole community.”
The taskforce will be chaired by Baroness Uddin, the first Muslim woman in the House of Lords. Its task is to encourage women to step forward to become local councillors; identify and tackle barriers within political parties, and reduce disadvantage and stereotyping from within and outside the communities.
Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said: “Democracy at its best should be a reflection of the people it serves and the proportion of councillors from ethnic minority backgrounds represents only half the number of black and minority ethnic people in this country
“It is vitally important that British citizens of whatever background feel that they are represented in democracy and I welcome the work that this taskforce will do to ensure that everyone can have the opportunity to contribute to politics and have their voices heard.”
Most of the recent coverage on the postal vote system tends to call for reform rather than abolition and is largely ignorant of the insidious way the postal vote acts to disenfranchise Asian women.
This recent article by Libby Purves stands out for being a bit more alive to the bullying and moral blackmail that can accompany its use:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/libby_purves/article3835336.ece
Comment by Ger Francis — 20 May, 2008 @ 5:30 pm
The campaign that Salma Yaqoob is spearheading against postal votes on demand is very important.
Most of the recent attention on the iniquities of the voting system have focussed on fraud. There is no doubt that fraud can be important in elections with limited electorates and where elections are potentially close. This applies to some council wards and a number of parliamentary constituencies.
No identification is required to register to vote and none to cast a vote. The virtues of making it easy to register and to vote is that it potentially increases the number of potential voters registering and voting. But it makes the system very vulnerable to fraudsters.
The government has now made things worse by requiring annual household registration renewal so that people drop off if you forget to return the renewal form. This adds no greater voting security but loses from the electoral register the absent-minded and generally speaking those further down the income and education ladder.
The government is likely to move towards an individual, rather than household, registration with some form of identity confirmation using fraud as the reason. This will further exacerbate the problem of ensuring the less well off and less well educated are registered unless there is a big additional resource allocation to councils to ensure maximum registration.
But by far the bigger threat to basic democracy in the voting system is the postal vote on demand. This was introduced allegedly to encourage higher turnouts in elections. It has been cynically exploited particularly but not only by the Labour Party ever since. They have used a variety of means to encourage their core voters to sign up to the postal vote system, to make it easier for them to secure these votes are cast for Labour by giving them weeks to round up the votes instead of getting them out on one day. This is also the area where the greatest fraud has occurred.
Far worse than this is the fact that postal votes on demand effectively roll back the democratic right to the secret ballot won in the 1872 Ballot Act. Families will be subject to pressure to register for the postal vote and then pressurised into voting for particular candidates when the election comes round. It will be seen as an act of disrespect not to fill in ballot papers in front of candidates or activists and not to hand over the ballots to them to deliver.
In Weavers ward, Tower Hamlets, the Labour Party won the recent by-election there by a country mile from the previous incumbents, the Liberal Democrats, using these methods, methods previously used by a Lib Dem canddiate.
There is no evidence that postal votes on demand increase turnout on a long-term basis other than through cynical vote farming by Labour and others. But it is clear it undermines genuine democracy. The problem is not confined to ethnic minority communities, although the problem is concentrated amongst such communities in some areas, and it is particularly oppressive and discriminatory against both women voters and women candidates.
The British electoral system has now been condemned by the Council of Europe, the Electoral Commission, the Rowntree Trust and Judge Richard Mawrey who presides over the election court. It was he who described the system as worse than a banana republic and who said the government had done nothing to improve the situation in ruling a Conservative candidate in Slough guilty of election fraud just a few months ago. Those who have sought to defend this fiasco in the name of democracy should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
Comment by rob hoveman — 20 May, 2008 @ 6:27 pm
Its perfect rubbish, even though it was written by the Judge in the recent Slough fraud case, to say that the Electoral Registration Officer cannot check on whether or not an application to register to vote is genuine.
The ERO can check against the Council Tax register and against other Council records, such as Council Tax Benefit claims and can investigate if there is any reason to query the registration. Arguably there is a duty, under the Crime and Disorder Act, to make checks. Checking against Council Tax benefit records is a particularly effective way of finding landlords trying to register themselves to vote at addresses they own but don’t live at. Who knows, it may open enquiries into other kinds of fiddle?
The fraudsters in Slough got away with some of their false registrations because Electoral Registration staff failed to spot that registrations were being made for empty houses. The Chief Executive of the Council ought to be very embarrased. Postal Vote frauds were built on top of false registrations. They usually have been.
And there’s nothing new, or particularly sub-continental, about old man trying to run young women’s lives for them. I’m acquainted with the second Muslim woman to be a Labour Candidate for parliament. She saw off some of the same trouble long before anyone had heard of Ms Yaqoob.
I do appreciate that people like Ger Francis and Rob Hoveman are somewhat new to electoral politics and may be lacking in a sense of history on these issues.
Comment by Alan Ji — 24 May, 2008 @ 10:32 pm