Tag: UK

Parsing Putin – what the Russian President’s article says about World War 2 and modern history

President Putin’s article in National Interest on the Great Patriotic War is very well worth reading to understand how is is seeking to portray the history of that period, particularly in light of the proposed changes to the constitution which would make it a criminal act to deny the official version of history. That is the message for domestic consumption at least.

But it’s message to an international audience is contained in its last paragraphs. It calls for a new conference of the modern great powers – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – a plea for Russia to be readmitted to polite diplomatic society. Given the context of an article about the destructive power of world war, this is a none too subtle hint at the alternative.

The structure of the article is a selective tour through the history of the 20th century. First and foremost, Putin states that it was the Soviet Union – all component parts of it – that was primarily responsible for defeating Hitler and Nazism.

As for the causes of the Second World War (and he does give the conflict that name on one occasion), he says that it was inevitable following the Treaty of Versailles and the feeling of injustice that this provoked in Germany. That’s a cause that is referred to also in western history teaching – or at least it was when I was at school. In addition, he says that Western firms helped Germany by investing in factories there that would be used to produce arms and that the borders drawn by the First World War victors (the Soviet Union being concerned in its own on-going revolution by this point) meant continued resentment in many parts of the continent.

But it is the ‘Munich Betrayal’ to which President Putin returns on a number of occasions as his pre-eminent reason for the Second World War. He says that France and the UK regarded Hitler

“as quite a reputable politician and was a welcome guest in the European capitals”.

He points out that Stalin did not meet with Hitler and that it was the division of Czechoslovakia, in which Poland was also complicit, that was the final straw.

And it was as a result of the Munich agreement and the decision by the Western Powers to allow Japan a free rein in China that the Soviet Union was forced to sign a non-aggression pact (Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement)

“to buy precious time to strengthen the country’s defences”.

Putin accepts that the secret protocols to Molotov-Ribbentrop (those that agreed the division of Eastern Europe between Germany and Russia) were worthy of condemnation but notes that the Soviet Parliament did just that in 1989 whilst the West continues to deny the impact that their joint agreements with Hitler had.

Once the war started, Putin claims that the decision by the French and British not to fight hard in the West allowed the German to concentrate their resources in the East. He suggests that this was a deliberate ploy to break the Soviet Union and that Soviet forces only invaded Poland as a last resort.

Putin identifies Churchill as being in favour of working closely with the Soviets (despite his hatred of Communism) to defeat Germany and acknowledges the efforts and sacrifices of UK, US, Chinese and French nations in the fight against Hitler but is clear that these were a mere supporting act to the leading role played by the Soviet army.

Finally, Putin turns to the United Nations and says that having countries with veto power is necessary to keeping the peace as it forces the big powers to negotiate and to find compromise, just as they did at Yalta, Tehran and other wartime conferences.

Russia’s remote voting proposals will lessen transparency and trust

In an already controlled environment, the latest moves to change electoral systems in Russia have the potential to further tighten the grip of the Kremlin. A Bill to enable candidate registration signatures to be collected via the state services app has been amended at the last minute to allow remote voting via a number of means. It passed the Duma (the lower house of parliament) after lawmakers were given just 36 minutes to see the proposed amendments. Covid-19 restrictions limited the amount of media and public scrutiny that was possible of the procedings.

What appears to have emerged from the process is a Bill that will allow for the development of internet voting, for postal voting and to expand the range of people who are qualified to vote at home on election day. In addition, for health reasons, voting will now be allowed in the precincts of the polling station as well as the voting room itself.

There is an axiom that any time you take the ballot paper out of the control of election officials, that vote becomes less secure and more susceptible to fraud. These new measures all remove the oversight that election administrators – and observers – will have over the process. It is perhaps no wonder that Russia’s leading independent election observation group – Golos – have said of the changes: 

“Their implementation without simultaneously ensuring guarantees of effective control will increase the level of distrust of citizens in elections.”

To take the changes one by one:

Internet Voting

Internet voting is often seen as the solution to many election problems. In the UK it was trialed as a response to declining turnout in the early 2000s. But just because someone tells a pollster that they are more likely to vote if they can do so from home via the internet, doesn’t mean they will actually do so. TV programmes which use internet voting have many hours of positive broadcast coverage and still only get a small proportion of their audience to vote.

As I have written before, internet voting is doubly problematic. First in that it takes the vote out of the polling station. Second, that it is reliant on ‘black box technology’ so the voter cannot see directly how their vote contributes to the result and there is no paper trail. If some malign actor, either within the election commission or hacking in from outside, wanted to fix the result then it is far more possible with internet voting and almost impossible to prove.

The only country which successfully uses internet voting for national elections is Estonia which has spent many millions (in a very small country) on security. This includes a reader for every household so that voters can insert their national identity card to be validated. Even then, I would argue, it is not completely secure as other members of the household could vote using a person’s card – particularly if they are vulnerable or disinclined to vote. And the chances of pressurized voting are obvious.

Postal Voting

Postal votes have been the subject of many election fraud cases around the world. It is not quite true to assert, as President Trump does, that all postal voting is riddled with fraud. But postal votes are subject to many of the risks of other forms of remote voting.

Where a person cannot make it to vote on election day, postal votes can be a good thing. In the UK we used to have a ‘for cause’ system which meant you needed a valid reason for asking for one. Now we operate an ‘on demand’ system. This avoids the need to tie up doctors and employers and for election administrators to deal with lots of paperwork.

Where the UK – and others – have largely failed is when they seek to adopt universal postal voting – ie every voter is sent a postal vote to their registered address. I have dealt with such issues here. In short, if a person is not aware that their vote is being sent by post then it is easy to abstract and cast illegally. Switzerland is a country where all-postal ballots do work well, but is a very different electoral culture.

In order to have an effective postal vote system, a country needs to have a means of verifying that the application and the resultant vote come from the registered voter. You don’t want to allow others to apply and then vote on your behalf. This means having lots of staff, lots of time and specialist signature matching software. My experience of the Russian system is that the elections staff are generally pretty well trained and motivated, but they are short staffed and would need a significant increase in their budgets and allocation of high quality hardware from local administrations which are often reluctant to let them have anything other than the oldest computers.

Traditionally, Russia has sought to address the problem of people being away from home on election day by allowing ‘place of stay’ voting. This system, managed by the state services app, allows a voter to move their polling station up to a couple of days before the election. If you are away from home on business or an economic migrant, you can simply change where you vote to a local station. And there are special polling stations created in hospitals and railway stations, and even on ice-breakers and at the Antarctic Research Station. So with all these options, are postal votes really needed?

Early Voting

Early voting has been used for some time in a number of countries. It is not the most susceptible to fraud as it still requires the voter to attend a polling station (their own or a central hub) where they are dealt with by election administrators in the same manner as on election day. However, it can stretch the resources of party and other observers who are there to ensure that nothing untoward happens. And it can make it easier for the same voter to cast multiple ballots by going from polling station to polling station.

Home Voting

Home voting has been the traditional means by which Russia allows those who cannot come to a polling station on election day to vote. It has always been restricted to the old and people with disabilities and requires an application by the elector which is then adjudicated by the polling station committee. If approved, then on election day a subset of the committee, plus observers, takes a small version of the ballot box to the home of the voter. Although in most cases this is a workable solution, it requires the intrusion into the voter’s home of up to eight people and it is often difficult to ensure the secrecy of the vote.

The proposal now is to allow carers as well as those being cared for to vote in this way. That may seem a logical step, but simply extends the problem, I would suggest.

Precinct Voting

The proposal is to allow voters to cast their ballots not just in the confines of the polling booths, but also within designated areas within the precincts of the polling station building – in courtyards, for example. This is being done, it is claimed, for health reasons.

Fairly obviously, loss of secrecy is a big problem with this proposal. If people are wandering around with their ballot then it can be seen by others. In my experience in Russia at least one third of voters do not bother to fold their ballot after completion. 

I don’t know whether there will be polling booths set up in the courtyards where voting will be allowed, but the chances are that these will be as unpopular as those in the officisl voting room if there is a fear of Covid-19.

Perhaps the other major problem is that election officials and observers will find it difficult to track what is happening. This makes frauds such as carousel voting, illicit pressure, family voting and proxy voting all more easy to achieve.

On the other hand…

I certainly would not suggest that the Russian voting system is in the dark ages. The place of stay voting system is very good indeed and deserves to be studied by many supposedly advanced democracies. And the state services portal makes it possible to accomplish a lot of tasks related to the elections process in a simple and speedy manner. That’s a boon to voters as well as to the state. If there were to be a form of internet voting then this might well be the basis for such a system.

That said, however, it is clear that the changes being developed as a result of this Bill are not going to make the Russian system more secure and will actually do only a little to enhance access to voting. Fundamentally, they open the way for those who wish to rig the vote to do so. Citizen confidence in elections stems from knowing that votes are cast freely and that the result is an accurate counting of only legitimate votes. Sadly I think that this Bill takes Russia away from those principles.

Social Media platforms are moderating Covid-19 content and should learn lessons for elections

Social media platforms have been very quick to act to limit the spread of false information about Covid-19 on their platforms. And they have gone further by prioritising content provided by expert sources within their algorithm.

So if they can do it for Covid-19, why can’t they do it in other areas such as elections? Why do platforms such as Facebook still insist on ‘letting users judge truth for themselves’.

So when it comes to elections and political issues, Facebook hands over control to third-party fact-checking organisations. They have limited powers and even smaller budgets. They can’t for instance, get involved in the the statements made by elected leaders or candidates. So if President Trump were to say something false on the platform then it would have to stand with the public left to decide for themselves whether it is true or not. Facebook claims that political statements often cannot be judged to be 100% true or 100% false and so it would be wrong of them to try to adjudicate.

And yet when it comes to the virus, there are many supposed facts fighting for attention. Issues such as whether you can catch the disease more than once, how much good facemasks do and whether children can catch or spread the disease are key. And there have been scientists on either side of the debate on each of these, with opinion shifting over time. Yet the platforms are promoting one side of the argument over the other in each of these cases based on what officials such as the WHO and CDC are saying. It cannot only be me who sees a double standard when it comes to the way the virus is treated compared with climate change?

Robyn Caplan at the Brookings Institute makes the point that there is a difference between moderation and mediation. She suggests that it is not just a matter of taking down the fake news, but of trying to understand the truth in a complicated scientific world

Most of us would accept that, when it comes to Covid-19, there is a difference in the knowledge held by Chris Whitty on the one hand and Jo Bloggs down the street on the other, and so it is right that the platforms use their algorithms to make sure we are more likely to see the former than the latter. But with election related material they do not. Indeed, the algorithms go out of their way to reinforce prejudice by promoting content from people like us and people we agree with and reducing the likelihood of us seeing any fact check or an opposing point of view. There is little in the way of debate in your Facebook feed.

Just as with electoral manifestos, there are areas of genuine debate about the virus that social media platforms do not, and should not, get involved with. How lockdown should be implemented and then lifted is a political decision. We can debate it online as much as we do in real life. And even though the science is more determined, it is not exactly agreed with by 100% of the scientists. You only have to look at the outcomes from the government’s SAGE group and the unofficial alternative. But the platforms are prepared to wade into this debate because they know it is their public responsibility to do so.

The UK government has delayed its Online Harms Bill again and today the minister refused to deny that it could be 2023 before it is enacted. With that much time available, surely it is right that the government here at least looks at the opportunities to require the platforms to take the lessons they have learned from Covid-19 and apply them to areas such as elections too.

Elections during Covid-19

Whilst the world is trying to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic, the normal functionality of most states is taking a back seat. That includes elections and democratic processes. The challenge for all leaders is to ensure that emergency measures put in place for times of crisis are rescinded as soon as they can be and normal democracy and personal freedoms are once again allowed to flourish.

So far, at least 20 countries have had elections postponed and more decisions are needed all the time. A few have tentatively named new dates in the autumn, but most are as yet un-scheduled. Some ballots have struggled on, but it has become clear that this will not be possible for much longer. Elections which had hoped to get under the wire, such as France’s local elections, have been pushed back. In the first round, the government asked voters to stay three feet apart and bring their own pens. Despite these and other measures, turnout dropped from 63% in 2014 local polls to 45%, prompting President Macron to postpone the second round. 

And yet there remain a few polls which may still take place. According to International IDEA, “elections in South Korea (15 April 2020), Russia* (public vote scheduled for 22 April 2020) Bolivia (3 May 2020), New Zealand (19 September) and Romania (late 2020) are being held as originally scheduled despite concerns related to COVID-19.”

(*Note that the Russian vote has now been delayed).

The decision for lawmakers is how they can balance democracy with the health of their populations. Can mitigation measures be put in place to allow an election to go ahead, or will it put the health of voters and poll workers at risk? And is there a risk that one section of the population – typically older people – will be less inclined to vote, thus affecting the legitimacy of the outcome?

Reading the expert scientific opinion, we know that the virus can be spread by sneezing and coughing and by social contact. It is yet to be shown how long the virus can live in the open air, but places where large numbers of people can be expected to gather are at risk and such comings together have been banned in many states. Facemasks and disinfecting might help, but probably not enough to ensure that busy polling places are not without at least a degree of risk. And it would not be practical to ask every person to wear a mask or to wipe down all surfaces between each voter.

Even if it were possible, the level of concern among voters would be significant and would surely affect turnout – a factor that is not in the interests of any candidate, nor of democracy.

In those cases where elections have happened regardless – often in a country’s early stages of dealing with Covid-19 – various mitigation measures have been tried. For instance, in Israel, special polling places were set up for roughly 5,500 people self-isolating and these featured plastic sheeting and poll workers in protective gear.

Postponing elections is an easier option, but it has a significant impact on the democratic legitimacy of those who stay in office longer. And in many countries it is simply not legal to extend terms. Over the past few years, the annual survey of the state of democracy in the world has shown a small degree of backsliding. One of the tenets of a democratic society is that elections are held regularly and freely. Postponing them obviously risks this and so must only be taken as a last resort. In cases such as North Macedonia’s parliamentary elections slated for April 12th, the delay is less important as these were early polls in any case. Postponing them until the originally scheduled date in the autumn might not have a significant impact on the democratic health of the country.

One might also argue that the democratic deficit created by postponing local and mayoral elections for a year is not huge as these are less powerful positions. But it may still be the case that a postponement is unconstitutional. In an emergency session of parliament on 15th March 2020, Austria passed the ‘COVID-19-Law’. The law does not mention elections, but allows for far reaching restrictions to public life, including bans of assembly for more than five persons. Local elections scheduled for 15th March in Vorarlberg and for 22nd March in Styria have both been cancelled. Indefinitely postponing elections is not in Austria’s Constitution and its election laws prescribe: “In the event of circumstances that prevent the beginning, continuation or completion of the election, the election administration can extend the election or postpone it to the next day.” If a new date is not pencilled in soon then it may be that such instances will result in court fights.

Another case of concern is the vote on a new constitution for Chile due to be held on April 26th which has now been postponed to the autumn. This vote was the outcome of many years of protests about the Pinochet-era constitution. Instead of voting to replace widespread restrictions to personal freedoms, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera announced a 90-day “state of catastrophe” to confront the growing outbreak. The move gives the government extraordinary powers to restrict freedom of movement and assure food supply and basic services. The military is permitted to intervene and uphold order when necessary. A significant test of every country’s leadership will be how restrictive the measures are that they feel they need to put in place and how soon they can start to ease them. 

And what of the November election for the US President – the most powerful elected office in the world? There couldn’t really be a serious debate about extending this term of office because it would fall immediately into an argument about President Trump himself. But if there could be an objective discussion, where would that end up if the virus was still having a major effect on American life? And how do we even get to the November elections which are reliant on a series of primaries to determine presidential and down-ballot candidates?

Various suggestions have been made about alternatives to the normal voting rules and procedures, but the oft-touted concept of all-mail voting does not come without significant risks. In particular, fraud, or the potential for it, is much higher based on the experience of the UK.

The idea of implementing an all-mail ballot is an attractive one, but comes up against significant barriers in the US context. Chief among these is that elections are a devolved responsibility with states and counties having their own laws and procedures. Just 34 states have a vote by mail option and the federal government cannot mandate its adoption. That is not to say that states might not choose to provide such a choice where they currently do not, or to expand it where it is currently limited, but such action comes at a price – both financial and logistical. One state that will be trialling an all-mail vote is Maryland where a special election is to be held on 28th April. 

As an international election observer for more than 20 years, I know also that taking ballot papers out of the confines of the polling station carries a significant increased risk of fraud. And in a large election with many contests, there will be a significant rise in spoiled ballots and voter confusion in cases where there is not an official on hand to explain the process to those who may be unsure.

Such problems are exacerbated where the vote by mail is not obtained through choice but is universal. In the UK we trialled this over several elections between 2000 and 2002. The aim was to raise turnout in years which traditionally had low participation rates. The problem was that ballot envelopes are easily identifiable and can be taken by someone other than the intended voter. This happened chiefly where the voter had moved on or was not interested in voting and is an even bigger concern in multi-occupancy dwellings where residents have access to the mail of others. Where a voter has applied for a postal vote, they are more likely to raise the alarm when it does not arrive on time. But where they might not be expecting their vote to arrive in the mail, they may not know it is missing – particularly if they are someone who is less inclined to vote in the first place.

The other issue we faced in the UK was of unscrupulous campaigners stealing votes, pressuring voters and even creating ‘fraud factories’ to open up completed ballots and change them if they were not cast to the liking of the criminal parties. 

With accusations of electoral fraud common in the US in recent years, even the possibility that this might be happening would be enough for candidates from across the political spectrum to throw accusations. This would damage trust in democracy and the credibility of those declared the winners.

Whilst in the UK we continue to allow postal voting on demand, we have tightened the system significantly. The all-mail election experiment was abandoned and the signature and date of birth of all postal voters are held by election officials with every returned ballot having a signed declaration which is checked before the ballot envelope is included in the count. It is a long and costly business with an impact on personal privacy and also leads to some valid votes potentially being excluded. But it is considered the fairest balance. Campaigners in the US have already made this a point of contention with some arguing for ballots without a perfect signature match to be counted.

That is not to say that all-mail ballots cannot work. The Swiss use such a system and there are few, if any, accusations of fraud in that country. But it should not be thought of as a risk-free option for the USA or elsewhere, even in these extraordinary times. 

Technological solutions such as voting using text messaging, via the internet or by telephone were also trialled in the UK and found to have significant security risks. In a country where foreign agents are accused of having sought to disrupt the last election, it would be foolish to consider introducing more opportunities for hacking. The only country that routinely uses internet voting for public elections is Estonia and they have invested billions over many years into hardware and software to improve the security of the vote. The chances of any other country doing so for an election due in the next couple of years is negligible.

Inevitably, there is no easy solution to this challenge. Postponement, all-mail and technological solutions each have their benefits but also significant drawbacks. The debate to identify the least problematic option or options should continue. But it will only be successful if accepted by all parties and candidates as the best alternative.

UPDATE: International IDEA has now produced a technical paper looking at the options for holding elections.

North Macedonia delays election. What about others?

Parliamentary elections in North Macedonia have been postponed as a result of the Covid-19 virus. The polls were set for April 12th. The election observation mission from OSCE/ODIHR had already been withdrawn from the country.

The election was called by former Prime Minister Zoran Zaev in response to the decision by the EU not to formally open accession talks with his country. French President Macron was believed to be behind the decision to halt the process.

Parties in North Macedonia must now hammer out a deal to decide when and how the elections can be re-scheduled.

With around 70 elections scheduled to take place this year, there will be many debates as to what is right for each particular circumstance. As the US primaries show, even if the main election is not due until much later in the year, problems now can still have a major impact

A paper by International IDEA discusses the challenges faced by those trying to hold elections at this time. They cite the need to balance public (and poll worker) safety with the curtailment of democracy if elections are suspended. But even if elections are pushed through, there is a high risk that many people will not risk going to vote and these may be disproportionately from certain groups. Using new technologies (or even old tech such as postal voting) is certainly on the table, but is very expensive to implement, requires high levels of voter education and opens a much greater risk of fraud.

The UK has taken the decision to delay local and mayoral elections by a whole year. Other countries will seek to delay for a much shorter period – perhaps hoping that circumstances will allow them to proceed in the autumn. Two other options might be to bring ruling parties and opposition together in a government of national unity for the period of the outbreak or to hold elections now, but recognise that these might not be fully representative and hold a fresh election in a year’s time.

Online Harms – how does the UK government plan to address election interference?

The UK government has set out a plan to give media regulator Ofcom more powers to regulate internet companies. The talk is about forcing platforms to hold a ‘duty of care’ for their users. We don’t yet know many of the details, and the term online harms covers a vast swathe of activities from child protection to terrorism, but we also know that the government has previously viewed interference with elections as one of the online harms that needs addressing.

So what is an online harm when it comes to electoral integrity and how could internet companies police such threats?

The first is interference with the electoral process itself. In this case, the UK’s adherence to paper and pencil voting and counts taking place in a single venue for each constituency actually helps. If we used electronic voting machines, or voted via the internet, then these might be open to manipulation. The only instance where the process is open to such manipulation is when scanning is used to count the votes in elections such as the mayor of London. So there needs to be confidence that the scanners and their software is secure and accurate and consideration needs to be given to having at least a sample of the paper ballots hand counted by hand.

The next key area is disinformation (or fake news). Should platforms like Facebook ensure that such posts are not altering the course of the election? 

To date the government has been keen to stress that it should be up to voters to decide for themselves what is truthful and what is not when it comes to electoral propoganda. Political adverts are exempt from the ‘legal, decent and honest’ requirements of, say, washing powder adverts. So politicians can say whatever they want on social media or their own websites. (Of course, the government could change their minds and require truthfulness, but this would mean establishing some sort of board to decide on truthfulness and a whole host of other issues.)

Just because the government doesn’t require it doesn’t stop the platforms having their own rules governing political speech. Facebook is the most open, allowing politicians to do and say what they want. They exempt political adverts from fact-checking and have said they are in favour of free speech and allowing voters to decide what is true or not. At the other end of the scale, Twitter has banned political adverts but still allows politicians to say whatever they want in organic tweets. And in the middle comes Google which has restricted the targeting allowed for adverts, but still allows things such as a banner advert which directed users to a site called labourmanifesto.co.uk – which turned out to be a Conservative party advert.

Platform policies are pretty much worldwide. So the UK government’s new initiative will throw down a gauntlet in the shape of a challenge to create UK service conditions reflective purely of UK laws. That has happened in other countries, but the platforms (and US government) have complained bitterly. Such laws have yet to be fully tested in the courts so we wait to see how the platforms will react.

Where the UK government may choose to act would be in the areas of user identification and financial probity. Electoral participation in the UK is limited to UK individuals and companies, and there are limits to the amount that can be spent. So it may be that the government chooses to impose new burdens on internet companies to ensure that only legal contributions can be made and that those responsible for adverts are clearly identifiable. This would take the form of clear ‘imprints’ and an open library to see who has produced what and at what cost.

Finally there is the issue of foreign interference. With participation limited to UK individuals and companies, what action might be proposed to prevent interference from those based overseas – either to seek to advantage a particular candidate or just to create disinformation and confusion?

To this end, crossbench peer Lord Cromwell (*) has tabled a question in the House of Lords:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, given the “real danger that hostile actors use online disinformation to undermine” the UK’s “democratic values and principles” outlined in their Online Harms White Paper, published in April 2019, what steps they plan to take to empower the proposed independent regulator to require online platforms to take down such material that may be perceived to have an impact on an electoral contest; and what guidance they plan to give to that regulator about how any such decision should be reached.

Of course the government may think election interference should be the responsibility of another body, not Ofcom. Or they may think that there should be no regulation or protection in this area – although that would contradict their main decision and they would have to explain why. We await the further details.

 

* Disclosure – Lord Cromwell manages many UK observer secondments to OSCE/ODIHR international election observation missions on behalf of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and has employed me in this role.

First Facebook election advert ban may not be as clear as it seems

The first example of a political Facebook advert being banned in the UK has now happened – or at least the first example that got widespread publicity. But I would suggest that all might not be as straightforward as it first appears.

The advert in question came from an organisation called the ‘Fair Tax campaign’. It was badged as ‘sponsored’ and contained the claim that Labour’s tax plans would costs everyone an extra £214 per month. It was taken down by Facebook after a number of complaints to the BBC advert watch initiative headed by Rory Cellan-Jones. 

However, the reason for the advert being taken down is that it didn’t comply with Facebook’s rules which require political advertisers to register and include ‘imprint’ information (noting who is responsible and their contact details). In addition to transparency, this would ensure the advert would go into the platform’s political ads library. It was not taken down for breaching the rule about false claims which can only be triggered by a third-party fact-checking organisation commissioned by Facebook – in the UK’s case FullFact.org. So Facebook have stated that if the advertiser registers it can go back up again (at least until FullFact takes a look at it and thinks differently).

Because the complaints were made to the BBC, they have received a lot of publicity. The advert itself has been reproduced, for free, on the BBC website and the claims have reached a lot of people who would not have seen them either organically or via payment on Facebook. Of course the BBC is keen to promote its new project and so this sort of reportage was to be expected.

It would have been open to the complainants to go directly to Facebook who would, presumably, have taken the same action without the attendant publicity.

Was this in any way deliberate? If not it certainly had a lot of benefits for the former 10 Downing Street staffer who is behind the ad.

Voter Suppression and poll failures – the latest government election efforts

Two significant bits of news as regards elections in the UK have emerged in the last few days:

Voter ID requirement would be suppression effort

First, the government has said that it wants to press ahead with plans to require voters to take photo identity documents to the polling station. This measure, although a common requirement in countries with ID cards, has been dubbed an attempt at voter suppression in the UK where the most likely to be hit would be young people, the elderly and people from minority communities.

Two rounds of pilots have taken place in local council elections where voters were required to bring either photo ID or poll cards in order to be allowed to vote. In the most recent trial in five local authorities, more than 750 people were turned away and did not return with the correct documents although many others did so after initially being refused. In contrast, during the 2015 elections (which included a general election) there 665 complaints of electoral fraud but most related to nominations or postal voting. There were 26 cases reported of ‘personation’ at a polling station, but none resulted in convictions. A total of around 51.4 million ballots cast.

But if most other countries require ID, why shouldn’t the UK? 

First, because we don’t have a national identity card system. (That’s a whole separate civil liberties argument). So we have to rely on forms of identity that we do have – passports and driving licences. But only about 78% of the adult population have passports and only about 80% have driving licenses. These raw statistics would suggest that 96% of the population would have one or the other, but actually if you don’t have a passport then you are much less likely to have a driving licence. So the real figure is about 11% – one in nine of the population. And these people are statistically more likely to be much younger, not in work or from minority populations – in other words, statiustically less likely to be Conservative voters.

In order to get around the ‘No-ID’ problem, the government would have to issue a special form of voting ID card. With a potential 5.6 million to issue, this would be an expensive and complex business (it would have to be free to the applicant) and very difficult to promote to the audiences who need to see and understand the message.

All this begins to look very similar to efforts in the United States to suppress the likely support for opposition parties. 

I used to work for the Electoral Reform Society. As part of that work I highlighted the much more real danger of electoral fraud connected with postal votes and this work resulted in significant changes to the law to try to stamp this out. Even with those changes I would still regard postal voting as a much greater risk of fraud than in-person voting. In response to the new government proposals, the ERS have said:

“Ministers should focus on combating the real threats to our democracy – dark ads, disinformation and dodgy donations – rather than suppressing voters’ rights.”

Electoral Commission criticises government over Euro-poll failures

Second, the Electoral Commission has blamed the government for the failures of the European Parliamentary elections when thousands of eligible voters were denied the chance to cast their ballot. The Commission has blamed “outdated laws” and “the failure by the government to act on recommendations made four years ago”.

The Commission also said voter confidence in the election was lower than in any other recent polls, denting the democratic contract with the public.

Thousands of EU citizens who were on the electoral roll were turned away as they had not been informed they also had to fill in a form confirming they would be exercising their vote in the UK rather than in their country of origin. There were a number of reports of councils giving misleading information to voters who made enquiries and of authorities who failed to process returned forms properly.

Many UK citizens living overseas complained that they did not receive their ballot papers in time to have their vote count.

Rory Stewart makes things ten times more complicated for voters in London Mayor ballot

Rory Stewart is running for London Mayor as an independent. That makes voters’ choices ten times harder and could result in carnage in the election next May.

That Stewart would be forced to abandon his current seat of Penrith and the Border in Cumbria was pretty clear. He had been deprived of the Conservative whip by Boris Johnson (although he remained a member of the party) and so would not be able to re-stand as a Conservative in the seat he has represented for ten years. The seat had previously been represented by David Maclean and Willie Whitelaw and is unlikely to be anything other than Tory after the next election. Some suggested he might seek revenge by standing against Boris Johnson, but Stewart has chosen instead to throw his hat into the ring for the London mayoralty, a position formerly held by the PM.

So why does this make things especially difficult?

The problem is that the London mayor is elected by a voting system known as the Supplementary Vote (SV), often described as the worst of all worlds.

Using SV, voters are faced with a ballot paper which asks them to mark an X for their first choice in one column and a second X in a second column for their second choice. At the count, the first choice votes are added up and if a single candidate has more than 50% of the votes cast then they win. But if they don’t then the top two vote getters are put through to the second round and the second choice votes on the ballots cast for all the other candidates are examined and any votes for either of the top two are added to their total. The candidate with the most votes after this is done is declared the winner.

Here’s the problem. If you want to ensure that your vote counts then you need to know (or guess) which two candidates will make it through to the second round (there will surely be a second round in London). You can then pick which of those two candidates you prefer (or least hate). The good news is that you can safely cast your first preference for whoever you genuinely like on the full ballot list, even if you suspect they have no real chance of winning. The bad news is that everything after that is guesswork.

So who will make it through to the second round? At the moment I wouldn’t like to guess. Clearly the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, has a good shot. He is the Labour candidate in what is historically a Labour city. But remember that in the first London mayoral election the official Labour candidate, Frank Dobson, was not in the top two. So it can happen. And there are now three other strong candidates. Shaun Bailey is the Conservative candidate, Siobhan Benita is standing for the Lib Dems (who topped the poll in London in the European elections) and now Rory Stewart. Add in the Green Party and Brexit Party who have smaller but significant levels of support as well as countless fringe and independent voices and it all becomes very complicated.

Your first choice is not going to be a wasted vote but your second choice, and therefore your ballot as a whole, could well be.

Here’s how it works for my particular case:

I have a strong preference for the Lib Dems. Of the rest, I have some sympathy for the Green Party and I like Rory Stewart despite him being in favour of Brexit. I would prefer Sadiq Khan to Shaun Bailey. So I will cast my first preference for Siobhan Benita. If she does not come in the top two then I want my vote still to make a difference. If I cast my second preference for the Green candidate it will likely be wasted. I am willing to bet that Sadiq Khan will be in the top two but who will it be against. If it is Shaun Bailey then I would cast my second vote for Khan. If it is Stewart then he would get my choice rather than the Labour candidate.

Add in the fact that many parties will try to convince voters to just cast a first preference in the mistaken belief that anything else could damage them and you are in a right muddle.

There are two possible solutions to this mess.

The first would be to move to a proper two round system such as is used in France. After the first round, all but the top two are eliminated and a second vote is taken a week or two later with just the top two from the first round on the ballot paper. That way, voters can have a free choice without the risk that their vote will go to someone already eliminated.

Alternatively (pun intended), move to AV – the Alternative Vote. Here voters number all the candidates in order of preference – 1, 2, 3 etc until they cannot decide between the remainder. Candidates are excluded in turn from the lowest vote getting and their ballots distributed according to the voter’s next preference until one candidate has the support of more than half the voters. It may be that it is your fourth preference that is counted, but your vote will not be wasted. 

In my example I can safely vote:

  1. Lib Dem
  2. Green
  3. Stewart
  4. Labour
  5. Conservative

and know that if it comes down to a final round choice between Khan and Bailey then my choice will still matter.

Note: I am using the ballot preference above as an example. It aligns with my views at the moment, but things might change. Please don’t judge me too harshly if you have other opinions.

Doppelgängers

Whether it be jumping on a bandwagon or seeking to mislead the electorate, Ukraine has taken the lead in doppelgänger candidates causing confusion. But this year’s elections were not the first use of such underhand tactics and India, Russia, the UK and USA have all seen variations of this phenomenon.

Jumping on the Bandwagon

At the recent parliamentary elections in Ukraine, the Servant of the People (Sluha Narodu) party of new president Volodymyr Zelensky won an overall majority with 254 out of 424 seats contested. It was the first time in the history of the country since independence that a single party had got a majority in parliament, but this was hardly the most unexpected outcome. Zelensky had won more than 73% of the vote in the second round of the presidential poll four months earlier and, whilst a lot of that vote might have been against his opponent rather than for him, there was no doubt that Zelensky and his party were massively popular. So it came as no surprise when a lot of people sought to jump on the bandwagon to gain an advantage.

Servant of the People was a political party formed by Zelensky and named after his TV show. In that production he plays a history teacher who unwittingly becomes president after a rant about corruption is illicitly videoed by his students and goes viral. The naif as president concept became hugely popular and Zelensky rode it into office with a campaign based on TV and online campaigns. In his inauguration speech he called for early parliamentary elections (as well as fundamental changes to remove immunity for elected politicians and changes to the voting system). Despite a court challenge, these snap elections happened and Servant of the People was in prime position.

Servant of the People was not the only new party. The Voice (Holos) party also appeared on the ballot paper. This was the creation of popular musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. He had talked about standing in the presidential election but chose not to in a move widely seen to be co-ordinated with Zelensky. In the event of a hung parliament it was expected that The Voice Party would be likely to align with Servant of the People. As with Servant of the People, The Voice fielded a slate comprised entirely of political newcomers. No sitting or former MP was running as a candidate for either party.

 

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A polling station in Kherson district set up for the 2019 Parliamentary elections

 

Ukraine has a mixed voting system for Parliamentary polls (although this is the subject of one of the changes proposed by the President). Around half of all MPs are elected from party lists. The remainder are elected from single mandate districts using first past the post. It was in these districts that closer contests and electoral malpractice were expected as they pitched incumbents against representatives of the new parties.

Servant of the People and The Voice were so popular that many people sought to imply their candidacies were part of these movements even when they were not. This was impossible to achieve on the national vote where lists were submitted by registered parties only. However in the single mandate districts OSCE/ODIHR found 79 candidates in 55 districts who used the name Servant of the People to run against the candidate officially nominated by that party. (In addition, other candidates campaigned with colours, logos and slogans similar to Servant of the People.) The way these candidates got the name Servant of the People onto the ballot paper was usually by claiming to be employed by an organisation of that name, of which there are currently 44 according to Ukraine’s registry of legal entities. In addition, the name Holos was used by five independent candidates in single mandate districts and in one case each the names of Opposition Platform for Life, Opposition Bloc and European Solidarity were used.

Servant of the People complained to the Central Electoral Commission who decided that the reference to employment places which coincided with the name of the party would be removed from ballot papers in some cases. However it is not clear how many cases this applied to and whether or not ballot papers were re-printed.

One candidate who was particularly put out by the decision by Servant of the People to run entirely new candidates was a sitting MP from the Bloc Petro Poroshenko (which re-named itself European Solidarity for the elections) faction who, when Volodymyr Zelensky announced his intention to run for President, left his faction and became a cheerleader for the man who would become the new President. But he was declined the opportunity to run as an official Servant of the People candidate. This did not stop him trying to imply he represented the President’s party however. His campaign literature made frequent references to the party and president and even featured (genuine) photographs of him standing alongside Zelensky. Voters, however, were not to be fooled and he lost his seat to the official Servant of the People candidate.

It is impossible to say whether these cases were all bandwagon jumpers seeking to cash in on the popularity of Servant of the People or whether some were in fact attempts at spoiler candidates initiated by electoral opponents. The suspicion is that they were mostly the former, but Ukraine has a history of another form of doppelgänger, the ‘clone candidate’.

Clone Candidates

The most well known of these clone candidates is Yuriy Tymoshenko. Mr Tymoshenko stood in the presidential contest in March as a self-nominated (independent) candidate. He revelled in the attention he received because he happened to share a name with the long-established candidate (and former Prime Minister) Yulia Tymoshenko. The similarity was not confined to their family name and first name. Both of their fathers had the name Volodymyr and so, in the Ukrainian fashion, they had similar patronymics – Volodymyrovitch for Yuriy and Volodymyrivna for Yulia. When asked about this apparent coincidence, Yuriy Tymoshenko claimed that he had announced his candidacy long before his near namesake and claimed to be a serious runner. No one believed this statement and his limited campaign material appeared in the same colours and style as his more popular namesake and used the name Y.V. Tymoshenko (Ю́ В Тимоше́нко in cyrillic script). Yuriy Tymoshenko was a spoiler, or technical, candidate aiming to draw some votes away from Yulia Tymoshenko. This was helped by the ballot papers listing candidates in alphabetical order, something unchanged despite a court challenge from Yulia Tymoshenko. In the event, Yuriy Tymoshenko won some 0.62% of the vote. This was not enough to make a difference to the outcome of the contest – Yulia Tymoshenko came third with 13.4% and was 2.55% behind the second placed candidate – but was almost certainly far more than he would have gained on his own merits. Of the 39 candidates on the ballot paper, 26 who did little or no campaigning (like Yuriy Tymoshenko) won between 0.01% and 0.17% of the vote.

 

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Ballot paper for the 2019 Ukraine Presidential election showing both Yuriy Tymoshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko

 

It is impossible to be certain whether Yuriy Tymoshenko’s candidacy was his own idea or whether he was inspired or funded by other electoral opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko. In limited interviews he claimed to be standing entirely on his own initiative. However in the paperwork required for candidacy he declared an annual income of the equivalent of $10,000 against a deposit required for candidacy of $92,000.

Clone candidates existed in Ukraine before Yuriy Tymoshenko. In 2016 UKROP candidate Oksana Valentynivna Tomchuk was opposed in the 27th constituency in the city of Dnipro by near namesakes Oksana Ivanivna Tomchuk (who also claimed to be a member of UKROP in her biography), Oksana Valeriivna Tomchuk and Oksana Hrygorivn Tomchuk.

The concept continued into the parliamentary elections. OSCE/ODIHR found 152 candidates with 69 similar or identical names standing in 42 single mandate districts. Police opened 46 investigations and the observation mission estimated that nine of the contests could have been affected by the phenomenon in that a clone candidate gained more votes than a similarly named candidate lost by.

In constituency number 25 Andriy Valeriyovych Bohdan was standing and his biography mentioned a connection to Servant of the People. Coincidentally, President Zelensky’s chief of staff is called Andriy Bohdan. Except he wasn’t running for Parliament anywhere and his patronymic is Yosypovych, not Valeriyovych. The official Servant of the People candidate, Maksym Buzhansky won the seat.

In constituency 92 in Uzhyn there were four candidates called Guzdenko with the first name of either Viktor or Vitaliy. Two had the same patronymic of Ivanovych. There are also three Oleksandr Ferenets.

In constituency 33 in Kryviy Rih, there were two Olha Volodymyrivna Babenkos. One was standing on behalf of Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party and the other was self-nominated. In the same constituency there was also a Mykola Yuriyovich Kolesnik and a Mykola Yuriyovich Kolesnyk.

In constituency 38 in Novomoskovsk, Dnipropetrovsk region, there was Vladislav Borodin from Servant of the People and Volodymyr Borodin, a self-nominated candidate, as well as two Vadym Nesterenkos.

Finally, in constituency 133 in Odesa, there were four people named Baranskiy — Viktor, Vitaliy, Vitaliy, and Ihor. The first two were candidates from the ideologically similar but politically separate Opposition Platform and Opposition Bloc, respectively. There were also Gontaruk and Goncharuk (both self-nominated), and two Artem Dmytruks, including one representing the Servant of the People party.

 

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Voter information posters on display at a polling station in Kherson district during the 2019 Ukraine parliamentary elections

 

Doppelgängers are not limited to Ukraine. In the UK there was a problem with candidates standing with party names designed to mimic other parties. One persistent candidate was Richard Huggett who stood in the 1994 European Parliamentary elections in the Devon and East Plymouth single member seat under the label of ‘Literal Democrat’. Mr Huggett eventually polled 10,203 votes, far more than the 700 vote majority of the Conservative candidate over the genuine Liberal Democrat. In the 1997 general election, Mr Huggett sought to stand under the name ‘Gerald Maclone’ in the Winchester constituency against sitting MP Gerald Malone. He was prevented from doing so but then stood with the label ‘Liberal Democrat – Top Choice for Parliament’. In an ensuing by-election in the seat he stood again under the ‘Literal Democrat’ label. Throughout, Huggett claimed that he was not acting on behalf of anyone other than himself and his antics, and similar undertaken by others, were only prevented by the 1998 Registration of Political Parties Act which stops candidates standing under labels which may confuse voters.

 

The Indian elections of 2014 present probably the largest single gathering of clone candidates. In one seat in Bilaspur district in the central state of Chhattisgarh no fewer than five of the 35 candidates were named Lakhan Sahu. In another, ten candidates shared the same name. The use of clone candidates might have less of an impact in a country where there are low levels of literacy and where many voters rely on party symbols to locate their chosen candidate. However there can even be similarity between symbols of candidates with the same name. In the seat of Maval in Maharashtra there were two candidates called Shrirang Barne and three named Laxman Jagtap with suspicions that each ‘real’ candidate had recruited at least one clone of their main opponent to confuse matters. The genuine Barne had the electoral symbol of a bow and arrow whilst his namesake was represented by an arrow only. The three Jagtaps were represented by a teacup, a cap and a helmet.

 

Shadow Parties

In Russia the concept of ‘shadow parties’ developed in 2003 and have been in existence ever since. The State Duma (Parliamentary) elections of that year were held at a time when Vladimir Putin was in his first term and the parliamentary elections were the first big test of his leadership. He was the head of the United Russia party but he faced genuine callanges from both the right and left, from the Communist Party and from the Liberal Democrats (now re-branded as LDPR but still led by firebrand nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky). And so Rodina was created, allegedly at the instigation of the Kremlin, to leach votes away from these two threats. They used the same symbolism and imagery as the Communists and many of the nationalist policies of the Liberal Democrats, and eventually gained 37 seats in the legislature.

It is worth repeating how shaky Putin’s grasp on power could have been in those days if he had not overseen the triumphant return of an overwhelming United Russia bloc. Russia demands a strong leader and strong leaders control parliament. In the event, United Russia won 37.6% of the votes in the national list element of the elections and just 24% in the cosntituencies, but this was enough for 223 seats overall due to the splitting of the vote. The Communists won 52 seats and the Liberal Democrats 36 seats. Had Rodina not stood, it is highly likely that the Duma result would have been far more balanced and United Russia may not have held an overal majority.

That was more than 15 years ago. But the practice of shadow parties continues. Even in the 2018 presidential election – one which Putin was certain from the outset to win and where turnout was seen as the big concern – there was a field of eight allowed. As well as the real Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), the Communists of Russia (KR) were on the ballot – a party with much of the same imagery, the same idolatry of historic figures (maybe a little more Stalin than Lenin) and the same policy proposals. Every vote for KR was a vote that might otherwise go to KPRF. And this time Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the LDPR had to contend with Sergey Baburin, an eccentrically coiffured former MP with the wonderful ability to conjure nomination signatures from every district and region despite never actually having any activists in place to gather them.

At the same time, Putin’s campaign material looked strikingly similar to a lot of other posters on display on billboards around the country. But far from being mirrored by another candidate or party, the incumbent president had the same colour scheme and design as the official central election commission and so every one of their millions of posters could be taken at first glance to be one for the sitting president.

 

Spoiler candidates

In the USA it might not have been shadow parties that were used, but many elections have been swung by the existence of third party candidates with similar policies to one of the main players who have been given a mysterious boost by supporters of the other.

In ‘Gaming the Vote’, William Poundstone relates the story that John Dendahl, chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, quietly offered “more than $100,000” to the Green Party if they would run candidates in NM’s first and second Congressional Districts. The Greens were relatively strong in New Mexico and had already been spoilers in local races. The difference was that the Republicans were now willing to pay cash for services that had previously been free.

Poundstone also cites the June 2006 special election for the Congressman from California’s 15th district, where Republican Brian Bilbray was a ‘foaming-at-the-mouth anti-immigration hawk who supported building a fence clear from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico’. William Griffith, a running as an independent using $2000 of his own money, claimed to be even more anti-immigrant than Bilbray. Then something odd happened. Phone calls started urging voters to vote for Griffith. Radio ads too. Griffith didn’t know who was behind them. Both later turned out to have been funded by Democratic candidate Francine Busby.

 

Legal changes in the UK have shown that it is legislatively possible to prevent parties with similar names or candidates standing under labels designed to confuse. However courts and electoral commissions across the world have proved reluctant to interfere in cases where candidates with similar names choose to stand against each other, regardless of their motivation or provenance. Party names and symbols can help to lessen the confusion, as can active campaigning by the ‘real’ candidate. But even in obvious cases, it is still possible for enough voters to be confused that they cast their vote for the spoof candidate and, in tight contests, this can be enough to make the difference.