Originally Posted by elovabloke

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.

LOL! :D

GBTD

Quite a number of related discussions have been springing up on ARRSE like bonny plooks, proving once again the importance of this subject. MOD, Ministry of Justice, Electoral Commission and political parties, please note.

This is one recent post in another thread, in which I mention the Service Voting Working Group and my views on electronic voting:

RE: Is our "secret" ballot truly secret?

Another link for anyone interested in this who hasnt seen it already:

www.baff.org.uk/service-voting-general/baff-arrse-the-2005-service-voting-campaign-and-silence-in-the-ranks.htm]BAFF, ARRSE, the 2005 Service Voting Campaign and 'Silence in the Ranks'[/url]

REGISTRATION DEADLINE TODAY TUE 20 APR

With campaigning for the General Election well under way the deadline for registering to vote is Tuesday 20 April. All applications must be in the hands of the local authority by 5 pm.

Today is also the last day for requests for a new postal vote or to change or cancel an existing postal vote or proxy vote appointment.

About My Vote, produced by the Electoral Commission

Hackle

Thank you for the reminder that the registration deadline is today.

Printing of postal ballots is due to start tonight. Postal ballots being sent to our troops in Afghanistan are due to be flown out this weekend. With mother nature continuing to spew out the contents of the earth, further disrupting flights, does this mean all well laid plans to get postal ballots to our troops overseas are now in tatters?

Originally Posted by votes4all

Hackle

further disrupting flights, does this mean all well laid plans to get postal ballots to our troops overseas are now in tatters?

If they are really serious then they can fly them west all the way around.

Originally Posted by elovabloke

If they are really serious then they can fly them west all the way around.

Elovabloke

If they fly the postal ballots the other way round does that mean we gain or lose time? It does seem so unfair that finally, when measures are put in place to get postal ballots to the troops in Afghanistan the entire plan looks as though it is going to be thwarted by hot air and a dust cloud.................

There will be a lot of people expecting ballots who are no longer going to be where they thought they were going to be, perhaps all those who planned to vote from wherever they thought they might be, but now aren’t, can write down the name of the candidate they want elected on a piece of paper and devise a cunning plan to get it back to their electoral office. Or do you think the powers at be might delay the count of final ballots............just to give people a fighting chance of getting their postal ballots counted.............now when was that done before...........

Major article by Audrey Gillan in tomorrow's Guardian election coverage: General election 2010: Battle-weary soldiers lose appetite for politics

We talk to a regiment that has sustained the heaviest losses of any battle group in the army's nine years in Afghanistan.

The article is about a unit recently returned from Afghanistan, rather than about the impact of current transport problems upon the special voting arrangements for those now in Afghanistan: see previous post by votes4all. (Latest news about flights seems more encouraging.)

"Random quote":

...It is soldiers like this that Douglas Young, chair of the British Armed Forces Federation, has been urging to register and then vote. "Among all regular service personnel and their partners, most surveys suggest that the proportion who are registered to vote is [around] 60%, compared to an overall national percentage more like 90%. The worst statistic I recall was 36% registered in 2005 amongst service personnel overseas, a figure which has improved since [then] as a result of all our efforts, but is still far too low," he said.

Originally Posted by votes4all

Hackle

Thank you for the reminder that the registration deadline is today.

Printing of postal ballots is due to start tonight. Postal ballots being sent to our troops in Afghanistan are due to be flown out this weekend. With mother nature continuing to spew out the contents of the earth, further disrupting flights, does this mean all well laid plans to get postal ballots to our troops overseas are now in tatters?

With the flights situation now improving, the authorities seem to be hopeful that the planned postal voting timetable can be achieved for those in main bases in Afghanistan.

We understand that, one way or another, all registration forms which were submitted by service voters either before deployment or in theatre were duly forwarded to electoral registration officers across the UK before the registration deadline of 5pm UK time yesterday. Some ingenuity was employed to deal with forms received close to the deadline; many others had already been completed prior to deployment.

Some of those registering from Afghanistan have opted for a postal vote. It sounds as if more have gone for a postal vote than the tiny number who attempted a postal vote from Afghanistan in 2005, almost certainly unsuccessfully. The majority have gone for a proxy vote.

In addition to the special handling arrangements for postal ballots to and from Afghanistan, I also understand that both Royal Mail and BFPO have done everything in their power to ensure that postal ballots, with their special marking on the envelope, are not delayed in transit anywhere.

It is suggested therefore that most postal voters in Germany will probably be better to use BFPO rather than the Bundespost for returning ballot papers to UK. Most voters will be familiar with local posting times and schedules and should decide accordingly.

Service voters aren't going to get any better arrangements than these for this General Election. Against that background, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of dealing with your postal ballot papers as soon as you get them, following the instructions and getting them back in the post or despatched under local arrangements as quickly as you possibly can.

Then we can start dealing with arrangements for service voting in future elections. The special voting arrangements from Afghanistan this time are a one-off temporary effort, not the future solution.

Hackle

Good to hear that postal ballots will be making the journey to Afghanistan. Let’s hope they make the return journey back in time to count.

My postal ballots have a much shorter distance to travel. Good to hear the British Forces Post Office are pulling out all the stops. Just a shame, the effectiveness of all their efforts will, as usual, be severely constrained by the very tight time scale of our ridiculously short general election time table.

Election 2010: Army voices 'won't count' claim

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/p...es/8641567.stm

Good to see there is continued interest in this issue………
Let’s hope post election everything is sorted.