Common Sense

No common sense

As I have already written, we will vote, here in the UK, on the 4th of July.

In order to vote you have to be registered. You cannot be registered on the day, because there are all sorts of control that need to take place. If you have not registered by a certain deadline, you cannot vote. Yep, it’s as simple as that.

If you are registered (as I am) you have the choice between vote in person and vote by correspondence. If you vote in person, it’s only on the one day, and you have to bring ID. No ID, no vote. In fact, the former PM Boris Johnson, who forgot to bring his ID at the administrative of last month, was sent home to fetch it even if he is one of the most recognisable faces in the Country.

If you vote by correspondence, you need to give evidence of address (they have ways to check this is genuine), and you have to deposit your signature. You need to vote with the same signature you have deposited, which will be confronted with the sample they have.

After enrolment, every year to get a letter asking to confirm that you are, basically, alive and living at the address stated. If you have moved, the letter will not go back and you will be cancelled from the register. If you want to be enrolled again, you have to repeat the ID and proof of address procedure. You can answer by the mobile phone you have deposited, but again at voting time it will have to be a proper signature, so keeping the mobile phone of deceased grandpa is not going to wash.

There are, in the UK, around 6% Blacks last time I look, I think not dissimilarly to the United Stated. Nobody would dare to insult them (and insult the intelligence of the others, too) by saying that the requirements I have just described amount to “voter suppression”. Everybody is treated equally. Nobody cries “Jim Crow”.

The result of the election is believed and accepted by everybody. Nobody tells you that you need to stay 6 meters away from the vote count. There is no possibility of having mass fake votes because of the process I have described. It works.

These are rules of simple common sense. They respect the democratic institutions, and respect the intelligence of the voters. They are applied rigidly.

It’s not difficult. You only need to want the elections to be fair and clean, and the rules to work.

If you don’t the elections to be fair and clean, you scream “voter suppression” and “Jim Crow”. And then your countries ceases being a democratic system, or ceases being peaceful, until sanity is restored.