Politics, Celebrity and the Myth of the Secret Ballot

The election race is hotting up and, with the prospect of none of the parties gaining a majority, the parties are pulling out the celebrity supporters in a bid to grab last-minute votes.

The Tories have Michael Caine (at least for their youth citizen plan), whilst Labour are punching above the belt with Sean Pertwee, David Tennant and current national hero Eddie Izzard appearing in their party political videos.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with sharing your voting intentions with others, but I do feel that celebrity attempts to use their popularity for political influence are just a bit tacky.

So I was very pleased today when Robert Llewellyn corrected a Guardian online article which had him down as a Lib Dem supporter.

He explains his reasons very elegantly in a Wet Liberal Whenever video, that he posted on YouTube this afternoon.

“I don’t want to be aligned with any party…because they’ll do something stupid” and when it comes to May the 6th, “I just want everyone to vote…and vote for who we really believe in”. Couldn’t have said it better myself bobbyllew.

All of which segues nicely into a discussion I was having earlier about the “secret ballot” in the UK. A lot of people still seem to believe that it is impossible to trace how a person votes, so long as they go to a polling station (as opposed to the postal vote). This isn’t true, due to practices initiated in the name of preventing electoral fraud your unique electoral number is written on the counter-foil for your ballot paper – it is quite possible for the two to be tallied together. It is, however, against the law to do so without the permission of an Elections Court (as outlined in the Parliamentary Elections Rules in Schedule 1 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 according to an Electoral Commission factsheet (pdf))