Originally Posted by votes4all

It’s all in the wording, ‘every member of the armed forces overseas who has a vote will be able to cast their vote’, is not the same as ‘will be able to cast their OWN vote’.

Depends how you want to take it really - I have emailed Mr Straw and my MP to get their take on it but it does not say that you can only vote if you vote by proxy.

Elovabloke

That's true!

Excellent letter to the Ministry of Justice, AFA06.

On voting from Afghanistan, the bespoke electoral forms for service voters should all be in by now and returned in bulk to UK for distribution to the electoral registration officers in the relevant constituencies.

I was interviewed on BBC Radio Solent this morning about the Afghanistan voting arrangements, and so forth. As ever I also stressed that the special arrangements do nothing to help service voters in Germany, Cyprus, Iraq (ITAM-N (UQ)), etc etc or at sea.

If you are a service voter, do please help to keep up the pressure by writing to Ministers, raising the issue with candidates, and so forth. This will help to build up the head of steam for the post-election review and new legislation for the future. Consider copying to BAFF, as well as in this thread. 'Silence in the Ranks' made good use of anonymised anecdotal (but accurate/justified!!) quotes about service voting.

Originally Posted by hackle

If you are a service voter, do please help to keep up the pressure by writing to Ministers, raising the issue with candidates, and so forth.

Thank you for contacting us about this matter, sorry no one has been in touch for a while. Nick has therefore written to the Justice Minister on your behalf to obtain some answers as he is aware that this is an urgent and important issue - as soon as we have received a response I will forward it on to you

As regards the announcement made by the PM in PMQs on 10 March about Armed Forces voting, it has not yet been made clear by the Justice Minister what the ‘arrangements’ for every soldier and member of the armed forces overseas will be which will enable them to cast their vote, or indeed whether, in response to your questions, this will include their families – and all forms of voting.
.

Phone lines to the Justice Minister appear to be busy:

Thanks for your message. Sorry about the delay in getting back to you, it's all a bit hectic down in Devon at the moment.
Nick agrees on the need to press the Minister about this - and I've tried and failed to contact the Ministry of Justice this morning several times by telephone to see when we might expect his response. I'll keep trying and let you know when I have some information.

Luckily their answer will come in just in time for the election after next..................................

Dear AFA06

SUBJECT: Freedom of Information Request

Thank you for your correspondence of April 8, 2010, in which you asked for Voting rights and methods of voting for members of the Armed services and family overseas under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) from the Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

You will receive a response from us by May 6, 2010. Your request has been passed to the appropriate business unit within the MoJ, and they will write to you with their decision by this date.

The FOIA does provide a number of exemptions. A qualified exemption requires that before relying on it we must consider the public interest test. If the information you have requested is covered by a qualified exemption(s) under FOIA, the Department is allowed to take longer than 20 working days to respond. This is because in such circumstances we are required to consider the public interest issues when deciding whether or not to disclose the information requested.

If more time is needed to consider the public interest issues under a qualified exemption(s), we will write to you and inform you of the revised date you can expect to receive a response to your request.

If you have any queries regarding this request please do not hesitate to contact us. Please quote ref: FOI/64582/10 in all future correspondence.


Yours sincerely,



James Noble
(Sent on behalf of Paul Hunt)
Data Access and Compliance Unit

Great stuff, AFA06.

There is renewed media interest in the issue, sparked by a couple of magazine articles, in particular Local Government Chronicle - Council to coordinate Afghanistan votes.

Borough takes on role in administering armed forces personnel postal ballot ahead of the general election

Unfortunately the test of the article is premium content.

It is also alleged that there is something in the Nursing Times!

Is there any role for using this Facebook app and publicising it via the various regimental/etc groups on facebook?
Democracy UK Voter Registration. Hopefully we can increase the number of registered voters from UK resident units if nothing else?

http://www.facebook.com/democracyuk?ref=mf#!/democracyuk?v=app_109349465766460&ref=mf

Why bother with the a voting-form?

ln today's age of techinology there is software available. What is wrong with this method?

Cuts down on time i.e. transportation of vital votes, that could going missing or be tampered with....

Easily accessible into today's ops circumstances

Flexible - i.e. give a point of contact, and banking the soldier's vote. After all, if voting areas can be created in supermarkets....

lf Labour truly wanted it's troops to vote, it would have pulled out all the stops by now. Apart from stereotyping them as would-be or potential Tory voters; isn't that discrimination?

Perhaps a call to the Gurkha's favourite celebrity Joanna Lumley may be able to assist the British Army in this crucial issue. Or maybe BAFF or another force's organisation can do a lot more: Actions DO speak louder than words.

Just a suggestion.

For those that have a vote, please use it and use it wisely.

I'm starting to think the arrse community missed a huge trick and a bit of a laugh here.

A campaign should have been launched to get every member of the service community to register and nominate Mr Brown as their proxy (as they seem to be so keen on that style of voting). Everyone who registered should then have emailed/written to him stating that he had been nominated as their proxy and could he please vote for the Tory candidate standing in his constituancy.

That would:

a. Keep him busy all day and off the TV.
b. Get him booted out of his own constituancy.

Perhaps we should save it for the next incumbant if they have not sorted things by then.

This was supposed to have been addressed after the last General Election. Another user and myself went to the BFBS debate on Tuesday. It was strange how all the parties said the same thing but were able to argue with one another. Not sure if the BFBS debate link is on here so click if you want to. http://www.bfbs.com/forcesnews/video_specials
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_lis...2BD897D5891852

Regards
Hitback