Mark Pack » northern ireland

Northern Ireland’s Liberal Democrats start up a new blog

Mark Pack — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 08:27:05 +0000

Excellent to see this new initiative, which is over at http://libdemsni.wordpress.com. Reading through the posts there so far I’m struck by how streaks of similarity poke through the many differences in Northern Irish politics compared to those of England, Scotland or Wales.

The blog got off to a good start with its star signing; let’s hope it prospers in the coming months.

Electoral administration isn’t going quite as well as it should…

Mark Pack — Sat, 01 May 2010 10:20:57 +0000

First, the good news: all the reports so far indicated a strong surge in people registering just before the deadline earlier this month. The Independent has some further figures to add to earlier reports. Thankfully, Havering Council with its hostile approach to people using the Electoral Commission’s website seems to be very much the exception. Whilst its electoral division has called “ridiculous” the number of people registering at the last moment, other councils have welcomed the surge of interest rather than criticised it.

Then the not so good news…

Allegations of postal vote fraud: the scale of the allegations, and the evidence for them, is growing in Tower Hamlets, as the Evening Standard has reported.

Misprinted ballot papers: rather a mess has been made of issuing the postal votes in Haringey. Not only have they gone out much later than in other places, but around 700 general election ballot papers had a printing error telling people to vote for no more than three candidates rather than no more than one.

More ballot paper problems: 2,000 ballot papers in Preston have had to be pulped and replaced after it turned out they had the wrong party logo on them.

Wrong instructions supplied with postal ballots: thousands of postal voting packs are being reissued in the Vale of Glamorgan after wrong instructions on how to fill out the packs went out first time round.

Missing windows in envelopes: in Kensington and Chelsea, around 14,000 letters have had to be sent out after a mistake with the initial issue of postal ballots. People had been told to fold the paperwork so that information showed through the window on the return envelope. One problem: they weren’t windowed envelopes.

Number of postal voters halves: in Northern Ireland, that is.

Error in statement of candidates nominated: over in Tower Hamlets, the statement of poll listing the candidates has an error on it. Candidates can choose whether or not to have their full home address printed or only the constituency in which they reside. However, in the case of one independent candidate they are down as living in “Haringey” constituency which has the slight problem of not existing.

UPDATE: Further stories reported in The Guardian.

Peter Robinson’s other problem

Mark Pack — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 23:29:49 +0000

In amongst all the political trouble for the DUP’s Peter Robinson, one other problem has been largely overlooked – an Electoral Commission investigation into donations. The problem? In public he’s talked about giving donations to the DUP which would have required declaring. But there is no trace of them in the DUP’s records of declared donations.

This is just the sort of issue which, for a popular politician at the height of their powers, rarely turns in to a big deal – apologise, blame bureaucratic details and move on. However Peter Robinson is anything but that at the moment.

Northern Ireland residents back ending donations secrecy

Mark Pack — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:59:24 +0000

From the BBC:

“Most people” are in favour of ending the confidentiality surrounding donations to political parties in NI, focus group research has suggested.

It was conducted by the Electoral Commission, which recorded the views of eight groups around NI, each consisting of between six and eight people.

Unlike the rest of the UK, details of political donors are still kept secret in NI, because of security concerns…

This confidentiality clause is due to expire on 31 October 2010.

The Northern Ireland Office is expected to consult the public on whether the clause should end or be extended further before the end of this year.

The original decision to exempt Northern Ireland from some of the controls around political donations (allowing both foreign and secret ones) struck me as being one of those unfortunate messy compromises that life sometimes requires. In principle, exempting Northern Ireland was wrong, but in practice given the delicacy of bringing peace to Northern Ireland it was an understandable step to take.

Donation reporting started in Northern Ireland in 2007 and now it’s good to see though Northern Ireland politics headed towards taking another step toward normality.