'Til trouble troubles you

Lord Pannick used his column in Thursday’s Times to make the case for an amendment to the Electoral Registration & Administration Bill, which he tabled in the House of Lords & which would make clear the right of every citizen to vote provided they present themselves to the polling station by 10pm. Nobody should be denied that right – as happened to some at the last general election - because there is no time to process them before the shutters must come down.

The amendment read that:

(7) A voter who is in the polling station or in a queue outside the polling station for the purpose of voting at the time specified for the close of the poll shall be entitled to apply for a ballot paper under sub-paragraph 1 above and a ballot paper shall be delivered and the voter entitled to vote in accordance with this paragraph.

Those who supported the amendment were disappointed that the government minister who responded spoke of difficulties, the need to consider unintended consequences & the need to define the word ‘queue’.

Once a bureaucrat, always a bureaucrat, & immediately I read of that ‘need to define’ my brain flew to all the ways in which advantage could be taken of a relaxed rule by those who have a vested interest in playing the game to gain maximum advantage for their own side – something far from unknown when power is the prize.

Lord Pannick responded immediately in the House of Lords by saying that he was very doubtful that a queue needs to be defined; a polling officer would know a queue when he or she saw one. In his newspaper column he said that any concerns that some might set out to cause problems were unrealistic & could in any case be solved by the application of ‘common sense’ by the polling officer.

I find it surprising that such an experienced lawyer could – by implication – advise public officials to proceed on the basis of their own common sense when a fundamental principle – the right to vote in a democracy- is at stake & should not be interfered with in any way by a nitpicking application of rules. Or that 'know it when you see it' is an adequate definition of anything.

It is probably true that gaming the rules to cause problems for election officials would be rare – especially in these days when political parties find it difficult to muster enough helpers to mobilise votes in every constituency. So perhaps the hard way is the best way to learn – write laws that are intended to be used by well-intentioned people full of common sense & amend them only when your expectations are in turn disappointed.

Link
Amendment 53 Moved by Lord Pannick
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