Gerald Said:

UK postal voting. Why is there a code on the voting ballot paper envelope? Do they track who you vote for?

We Answered:

It's about tracking the paper, not who you vote for, so as to help prevent election fraud.

The way British Parliamentary elections work is that you are voting for who you want to be your MP, not for a party. Strictly speaking, parties are completely ignored at the election: each candidate is allowed six words to describe themselves on the ballot paper and of course candidates who belong to a party (it's possible to stand for election as an independent candidate without belonging to a party) will use that six words to give their party name. This is why your local candidates' names are in bigger print than the party names.

The Prime Minister is not directly elected in the way that the American President is. What happens instead is that the leader of the party that gets most MPs will be appointed Prime Minister by the Queen (or if it's Brown, he already is Prime Minister so doesn't need to be appointed again).

So if, say, you want David Cameron to be Prime Minister, you vote for whoever is the Conservative Party candidate in your area. You would only see his name on the ballot paper if you lived in Witney, Oxfordshire, as that is where he's the local Conservative candidate. Similarly you would only see Clegg's name on the paper if your constituency is Sheffield Hallam.

You don't tick the box, either - you're supposed to put an X in it!

Cody Said:

Is it now time to set up Online Voting for UK 'E-Lections'?

We Answered:

Yes! I've been thinking the same thing.

But not because of the people who were turned away. I think it would encourage younger people to vote more. They can't be arsed going to a polling station.

If we can access our money online then why not vote? You get a unique password and ID number to the gornment website and vote it's simple. It means "traditional" voters can do what they do and the new generation can do what they do. Not enough people vote.

Edit: Some people are saying it could be hacked. I think the powers that be would notice that it's been hacked and a simple solution would be to be to redo the online election and make it more secure. It's not difficult to do. Also, does the chance of getting hacked mean that we shouldn't try somethign new??? I don't think so..

Penny Said:

Why can't I vote online for the UK General election?

We Answered:

The current method works. No UK government has decided to put money into the technology for it (which is no bad thing considering its terrible record of making IT projects work), and not everyone has an Internet connection so not all voters could use it. That would mean opening up polling stations anyway for the people who can't vote online, meaning it would be more expensive as two voting systems would be running in parallel and it would complicate the count. And the powers that be are still worried about electronic electoral fraud, rightly or wrongly. There are endless trials and consultations - the Representation of the People Act 2000 allowed trials in online voting to take place in local elections but nothing ever seems to come out of it.

The silly thing is that this Labour government seems to have no qualms at all about putting all our personal data on to a national ID register when ID cards come fully into use. It will undoubtedly be worth some thief's while to hack it and it'll be the biggest aid to ID theft ever.

Nancy Said:

Will the postal voting system be abused again this UK election ?

We Answered:

why not.

Elsie Said:

Do postal votes allow more coercion / blackmail to take place?

We Answered:

They certainly did in my area ! Once, the only people allowed a postal vote were those who could prove that they would be away from home on election day. How things have changed!