Freesteel Blog » The day which counted

The day which counted

Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at 2:04 am Written by:

There’s an astonishing number of Liverpool local elections wikipedia pages set up by administrators, which need investigating.

Yesterday we got up at 4:45am, and Becka pulled me out of the house at 4:52am having had no morning tea and forgetting to put a banana into my pocket for breakfast. Things were already busy over at John Coyne’s house in St Michael’s Ward where everyone had converged to do the early morning mail drop. Coyne had printed out a handful of personalized letters to certain addresses urging residents to vote Green, and we also had these very dull little post-cards to post through the doors of all the others.

I bagsied Floral Wood and surrounds because I’d found its spread-out American-style pavement-free suburban mock-tudor architecture stunning when I leafletted the area earlier in the week. These houses had enough room to park all their cars at once, which is important because the only way to the doors without stepping on the grass was up the driveway. I couldn’t understand why they don’t have swimming pools out the back as well.

In the other streets, such as Westward View or Thistledown Close, people don’t have space to fit their regulation three cars and no bike, so you’re constantly having to walk round the sparkly BMW on the pavement. I hope to live long enough to see the automobile age end and these proud beasts go to the crusher. In the long run, all of the Green policies will be adopted by society, in the same sense that whale hunting has ended. The only question that matters is whether it stops before or after the whales (or we) become extinct.

The sun gradually rose. The milkman came and went. I saw the LibDem guy doing his morning leaflet drop — it was a big yellow A4 piece of paper shouting: “Good morning!” on every doormat beneath the letterboxes in the porches. I taunted him with the stiffness of my Green Party postcards that were strong and durable enough to push through the bristles behind the letter flaps if you applied just the right amount of longitudinal curl when you did so.

Letterslots! Now that’s a major case of User Interface design satisfying the common criteria of an obvious problem which could be solved if only the person who had the power to do something about would ever happen to notice. You can own a house for 20 years and never once in all that time experience what it is like to push a thin envelope through your own letter-slot! I can push the over-sprung flap inwards with my left hand, but, unless I aimed exactly right for the gap between the thick black brushes, it crumpled. Some places have an extra inner flap on the other side — with an inward hooked lip!. What kind of &*@%#~?!!! You have to insert your entire left hand in to get it through. Luckily there was no dog on the other side. The other mind-bogglingly stupid type of letter slot is the kind that’s vertical and hinges upwards instead of sideways. And, while we’re at it, why is it legal to sell front doors where the slot is 5cm above ground level?

We got home, did our other stuff, then got our tickets to go to the count because Becka was a candidate and I was an invitee.

It was a fantastic experience!

I had expected to be sitting in a waiting room while the technical counting staff did their work a safe distance away, until the boring announcements made by a boring person at 3am in the morning told us of our fate.

But it was nothing like that. Instead we had free reign to mill around a huge sports hall where the tables were laid out in areas according to the wards of the city. The ballots were counted right there in front of you in the open. You could lean over and point to them.

There was a huge crowd of Greens over at the St Michael’s Ward desk (all the Green candidates who’s names were put up in the other wards were there), some with clipboards making their own tally as each ballot sheet was unfolded and flattened out into a stack. This was the first stage in the counting process.

Becka and I drifted off so as not to put too much pressure on the counting people. At the other side of the hall we found the BNP dudes hovering over the desk for Belle Vale looking like typecast characters selected for a play. Two of them were even wearing blazers, one with war medals — and he was probably less than 30. I felt intimidated until I saw the Labour Party leader, Joe Anderson, nearby. He out-thugs anyone by appearance. The last time we crossed paths was when Condoleeza Rice visited Liverpool and I was part of the crowd shouting at him not to go in to watch the show put on in her bloodthirsty honour.

Without doubt, the desk I felt most sorry for was for Allerton & Hunts Cross where Flo Clucas presided like a stern pensioner watching her pound notes being counted out at the Post Office.

Kirkdale had this complicated double-length ballot sheet because there were two seats and you could put a cross in two places. What they did to count this is too complicated to explain.

Back at Princes Park where Becka was a candidate, the sharply dressed Labour candidate Timothy Moore (seems to be no picture available on the web) was having kittens. The local MP Louise Ellman was at his side. Later in the evening when his seat was secure, they got a bit chattier. Of course she recognizes me. And of course local MPs always show up for these counts — they depend on these party activists when it’s their turn to be elected.

After unfolding and flattening all the ballot papers, they’re sorted into piles. This stage is done across the desk so the piles are on our nearside (their farside) and we can see that they are being put into the correct places. There’s a tray for spoilt ballots (eg “no – faith – in – any – of – you” written down the column).

After this, the piles are bundled up into batches of fifty and given a colour coded piece of paper according to the candidate. Now the amounts are easy to see, like bricks of hundred dollar bills in a businessman’s suitcase.

Our Green candidate, Sarah Jennings, won her seat. She’d been canvassing solidly since January and has attended every Liverpool City Council meeting in the public gallery for a year, so the system works to some extent. Though I do have a lot of unanswered questions about voting behavoir and what really drives it on.

As the most interesting individual result, Sarah was interviewed several times by earnest young reporters who took notes in shorthand. One of the main Green Party organizers, Peter Cranie, was always at her side to help with the questions. We clustered in a group to cheer for the cameras when the result was officially read out. Someone gave her forms to fill in relating to the acceptance of the position of city councillor.

Becka and I sloped off at 1:30am on our bikes, the only ones in the whole of the carpark. It’s was an experience of hope and joy. An antidote, and proof positive that it’s possible, and totally desirable, for elections to be counted with complete fairness and transparency — unlike the misery they experience across the pond in the greatest democracy in the world.

It also explains why the idea of electronic voting has never been an issue in the United Kingdom — in spite of the fact that the UK political class are demonstrably more ignorant than anyone else about what can and cannot be effectively computerized; while several other European countries with better informed elites have completely fallen for it.

Electronic voting is off the table in this country, not because it is hugely expensive, woefully unreliable, and vulnerable to fraud in an unbelievable number of ways — all points in its favour for the people in charge, since it’s not their money or votes that get ripped off!

No, electronic voting is off the table because it would take away the thrill provided by this absolutely perfected proper paper count process.

At present, no one is sure how the balance of power has shifted. And I don’t really care.

The Audit Commission report from February 2008 says that Liverpool is the worst financially managed council in the country and that (p8):

Member behaviour at times is poor and affecting capacity. There has been inappropriate behaviour dealing with some officer issues. Information is sometimes ‘leaked’ to the press and other sources for short-term political advantage. Behaviour of some members at Council meetings is poor with personally abusive language used and aggressive behaviour regularly demonstrated. As a result, some members said that they would not speak at a Council meeting for fear of being shouted at or ridiculed. Trust between officers and members is not effective. Members recognise that the culture of the organisation is not appropriate and stated that the culture needed to change. Behaviour of some members is damaging the reputation of the Council which is recognised by all members.

Shame they don’t stick it on television, like they do Parliament. Couldn’t be any worse.

I was reminded that the late Frank Zappa was right when he told kids:

“… and I’ve been telling kids for quite some time, is first register to vote, and second, as soon as you’re old enough, run for something.”

With this glow of positiveness, the question now more than ever is how does it get so bad from here? Where exactly does it go wrong?

1 Comment

  • 1. Counting the votes «&hellip replies at 16th June 2009, 9:51 am :

    […] the UK the candidates and their colleagues are allowed to go to the count where it is all done visibly. It’s difficult to kick up a stink about something going wrong […]

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