Conal Gregory: One person, several votes, thanks to polling loopholes

We may appear to give one vote to one person but the practice is very different. While we recognise equality of rights and privileges for all people, our elections are quite a different matter.

A right to vote is not a privilege but a fundamental principle of a democratic society. This was enunciated recently again by the European Court of Human Rights (in discussing whether prisoners should have the right to vote).

Before critics evaluate the rights and wrongs of the Alternative Vote, they should address a more fundamental issue: how to ensure there is proper registration and access to no more than one vote.

Each year canvass forms are despatched to households and one person is responsible for entering all those who qualify to vote on October 15, including birth dates for those who reach 18 years in the coming year.

Usually parents will put their student offspring on the form even though it is highly likely that they will be absent at college or university when an election is called. In theory, this is fine and such students should apply for a postal vote.

The vast majority of students live in a hall of residence for their first year. Usually, an university administrator puts all of them on their registration form. It is not a requirement to do this individually and so some may not be aware that they have been enfranchised for a second time. They quickly become aware of the potential of double voting when they receive an official notification a few weeks before an election, giving the address to vote and ballot times.

Despite the power of computers, there is amazingly no cross-check with a student’s home address to check if two registrations are in place. Electoral registration officers only look after the registration at their local authority, which is incidentally not the same as a Parliamentary constituency.

Bodies like the Electoral Commission spend time and energy encouraging people to register but seemingly not a minute on cleaning up such duplication.

Such duplicity does not end there. Students are fickle with their accommodation and most move out of halls in their second year, often to a shared house. Again, probably this time by their landlord, they are entered on a registration form.

The temptation to vote a third time arises when another invitation arrives with that year’s details of the ballot and hours. The fraudulent can show such a card which is sufficiently persuasive to the clerk on duty.

If the student moves home in their third year, yet another registration is made.

Until the Representation of the People Act 1948 which abolished university constituencies, people could legally vote more than once for their MP. Today some students openly flout the law and create their own “meritocracy”.

Electoral registration lists are sloppy. If no return is received, officers still continue to list people. This has at least two appalling consequences. Firstly, it means registration cards are issued for those who have moved home.

Students can pick up literally hundreds of such cards at halls of residence, hand them around to friends with the same political sympathies and vote time after time. Such cards have even been handed around in pubs.

Secondly, the dead continue to vote. It should be a requirement that when a coroner issues a death certificate, a copy is sent to the electoral registration officer who should remove such an entry immediately.

At the ballot box, photographic ID should be required to receive a voting form. This already happens in Northern Ireland after being introduced in 2002. Instead an almost meaningless registration card is shown which is sufficiently persuasive for a clerk to issue a ballot paper.

Multiple voting is illegal and undermines the basis of democracy. If convicted, the current maximum fine is £5,000 but it is almost impossible to prove. Only a challenge at the time of voting will succeed. Opening a ballot box later to find a illegal ballot has been cast is insufficient evidence.

Frequently party political volunteers stand outside polling stations to ensure their targeted supporters are recorded, while the police patrol. Yet it is not until someone seeks to obtain a ballot paper illegally that the deception or fraud is committed.

Impersonation is rife and should be stamped out. A short Parliamentary Act could ensure those who temporarily move home – notably students – have a single postal or proxy vote and the deceased are promptly removed from the electoral roll which only accepts annual registrations.

Then the UK can hold its head up high and declare that it is a land of one person, one vote.

Read Conal Gregory every Saturday in the Yorkshire Post.

Conal Gregory was Conservative MP for York from 1983-1992. He is the Yorkshire Post’s personal finance correspondent.