How to Vote (pt 1)

Local elections are coming up in May and a few stories about voting have caught my eye over the last couple of weeks.

Taking them in chronological order, firstly the Divisional Court has held in Pilling v Reynolds [2008] EWHC 316 (QB) that a '\' next to a name on a ballot paper can be counted as a vote, even though it wasn't in the right box. This would seem to be right, to hold otherwise would be to do quite a damage to Ruffle v Rogers. When I started to write this post the case was only reported on Lawtel (full judgment Edit: I can't seem to get the darn Lawtel links to work at the mo), but thanks to my brilliant tardiness it can now also be accessed via Westlaw or LexisNexis, but not it seems via any non-subscription services (Edit: It is on BAILII, just they called it Re Burnley Local Government Election).

There has been quite a bit of coverage about Eshaq Khan, a Conservative Councillor in Slough who has been found guilty of vote rigging. At least 145 postal votes were faked, probably hundreds in total, making his 120 vote majority look a tad vulnerable. The Times has followed this up with several articles about postal voting, such as this, this, this and this leader. Richard Mawrey QC gave the judgment.

Postal voting is just one of the many concerns surrounding the Zimbabwean elections on Saturday. I have a sneaking suspicion that Mugabe might just clinch it.

It appears that Youtube has been hit by vote rigging of some sort as well, after a change at the top of it's most watched video leaderboard. Is Youtube still even going? The explanation appears to be that the video was tagged with "hot" and "sex", a throwback to the days before cats controlled the internet.

Then yesterday's Guardian carried a report on its front page about proposals to reform electoral legislation to encourage greater participation. Apparently the quite ridiculous combination of alternative or supplementary votes (not clear which) AND compulsory participation is being mooted. Ken Ritchie, Chief Executive of the Electoral Reform Society has responded to these proposals. See also the view over at Make My Vote Count. How long before somebody suggests tagging ballot papers with "hot" and "sex" to increase voter turnout? Actually, it looks like I just did. Patent pending.

Also buried within the Guardian was this report about the value of influence-peddling to MPs. The research paper, 'MPs For Sale? Estimating Returns to Office in Post-War British Politics', has been carried out by two Harvard researchers and there is a brief summary available as well. There is also a little bit of analysis about their statistical analysis.

And finally, Bhutan has become the world's newest democracy, possibly inspired by Slough.

Wikileaks

Although wikileaks.org is no longer available, there are a whole host of cover names or the ip address is still working. More at Media Law Profs and the New York Times.

I'd have called it samizdat.org, but whatever, I've got a nose bleed to attend to.

New Immigration Bill

Here, here and here, although unsurprisingly not here yet.

It's a small point, but since when have nonpayment of taxes and law breaking NOT been integral parts of British society?

Dusting off the cobwebs

Well, it's been a long time and I all I have are rather poor excuses about the combined load of work and study. Anyway, while the tumbleweed has been blowing through here (although bizarrely feedburner reports that the number of subscribers has gone up quite a bit during January - welcome you poor deluded newcomers) I have realised that I a) need to make more of an effort and b) nope, just that.

I was going to do a rather potted summary of some of the most interesting developments during the hiatus, but to be honest I'm sure that somebody somewhere has already covered everything, so I'll leave it at that for now.

This year will mark the tenth anniversaries of the Human Rights Act and devolution (Scotland Act and Government of Wales Act). More on both of these over the course of the year. I also have a new project in the pipeline which might be of interest/use for some people, which I'll write more about later.

I still haven't found what I'm looking for

While I would still like to see something that allows me to easily cross search Athens resources, I have been using a little Firefox addon for a while which is fantastically useful. Dr. Evil's 'Add to Search Bar' creates a search bar entry for pretty much any website that has a search facility. It works well with sites like BAILII and you can use it with Westlaw as well, but so far I haven't been able to get it to play with LexisNexis. A bit more tweaking perhaps.

Christmas Party Food Safety Warning

Geeklawyer has been busy robustly defending Manchester Council's brave anti-photo policy and quite rightly too. Won't somebody please think of the children? Now Mrs Publawyer has pointed out a disturbing trend by the CPS to allow youngsters to roam the country hurling party snacks at all and sundry without fear of prosecution. While some will applaud this as a victory for common sense, I can see the darker and more disturbing side. Everyone knows that cocktail sausage assaults are the cannabis of the non-fatal offences ladder. Before you know it they'll be sharpening the corners of doritos and turning them into 3-point throwing stars and bludgeoning the unsuspecting with empty coke bottles with cocktail sticks inserted.

And before my other regular reader points out that this is an old story, I would like to highlight that this story did indeed break in August, but it is only this week that the CPS have decided to discontinue the case and as I only heard about that yesterday evening I have to work with what crumbs I can.

Following on from that revelation was a discussion on youth justice on Radio 4's 'Unreliable Evidence'. Lots of complaints, but not much in the way of workable solutions. A working party is all very well and good, but any ideas, any at all, for the way forward? Someone (I think he was a magistrate, but I can't get the Listen Again function to work to check it) appeared at one point to be just a well-timed Clive Anderson intervention away from advocating all out vigilante reprisals as the way to cure the defects in the youth justice system. Marvellous. Some mention was also made of the tendency of the police to arrest and charge youngsters even in trivial cases due to their targets etc, but why do the CPS make the decision to prosecute anyway?

"It’s a free country, i'n'it?”

Excellent stuff from Baroness Hale (at 112) as the House of Lords slapped down the Countryside Alliance's latest challenge against anti-hunting legislation this week. Head of Legal has some more serious analysis, but I want to know if the Lords will be completely embracing this kind of approach and soon be texting their speeches in. Presumably this fella would completely flip out at such a development. Assuming of course that he hasn't already.

Whoops!

D'oh! Perhaps Sir Ian Blair's resignation letter has got lost in the same way. Just don't judge him on one letter ok? Equally don't judge HMRC on one lost CD ... there was two? Morons, why didn't they just use a DVD?

Anyway, if HMRC can rustle up the cash they can get the disks back through eBay and everybody can stop frantically giving their kids new birthdays so that they can change their PINs to something they can still remember - "Chantelle, CHANTELLE! Mummy can't remember when your new birthday is, go and get another new PIN from the bank and we'll get you another birthday. Hmm, how many months are there in a year anyway?"

More seriously, the whole sorry scenario is more proof, if it were needed, that big government and secure, efficient, value-for-money IT project management do not go hand in hand. Remember kids, aggravated damages are available for misuse of private information, I think we can slap something together.

More on this from Charon QC, Geeklawyer and IMPACT.

Update: eBay have pulled the listing, doubtless after HMRC turned up at their door thinking they had the CDs, but there is a copy at The Register. Of the eBay listing, not the CDs, that would be just plain crazy. And in order to improve my posting average I reserve the right to branch off into restaurant reviews.
The NAO link in my comment below should be http://www.nao.org.uk/pn/07-08/0708_child_benefit_data.htm
Sorry bout dat.

Play nicely now

The Guardian this week reported the case of several blogging critics of Sheffield Wednesday being unmasked. The judgment is up on BAILII.

Elsewhere apparently "claims of patent infringement are rife" within open source.

Athens toolbar - not quite there yet

The Athens toolbar has been around for quite a while now - the most recent version is almost one year old. It's a good idea in principle, but missing a few key features that could make it a vital addon.

When not logged into Athens the toolbar has only one option, which is to take you straight to the MyAthens login screen. Once logged in you have a drop down list of all your Athens resources, a log out button and a few account management options. Ok, these are relatively useful, but not really anything that couldn't be achieved with del.icio.us and some judicious tagging. Far better are the features that it doesn't have yet. Add in an easy way to switch between Athens accounts for those us of us with more than one that cover different areas and it's instantly more useful. How about a search box? I realise cross searching might still be a step too far, but a search engine box like Firefox's standard one which allows you to specify Westlaw or LexisNexis would save me literally seconds every day. Over the course of a year the savings could be as much as a couple of minutes. Until then I fear the toolbar might be taking up too much screen real estate to justify its existence.