–Election rigging and stealing isn’t just for supposed despot countries including the US
Opinion by Mathew Carr
May 4, 2024 — Today, almost two full days after the end of voting, Londoners found out who will be their mayor.
The favorite to win was incumbent Sadiq Khan, a member of the Labour party … and his party declared victory around 2pm Saturday London time, according to the Independent newspaper, without citing its sources.
Labour is a political party that holds the main opposition position at a national level in Britain, and one that’s favorite to win control of the country’s government in an election to be held sometime before February next year.
The Conservatives (or Tories) are currently in control of the nation and have become deeply unpopular, according to opinion polls, after a series of scandals and unflinching support for genocide in Gaza.
Yet, the Tories have deployed what is probably a multi-year strategy to try to wrest control of London, arguably one of the world’s most important global cities because of its influence over finance, politics and arts, from Khan. This strategy came to a head today, when the complete results of Thursday’s vote were revealed.
Had the Tories pulled a surprise win, it would have been basically because they cheated using tactics outlined below, usually associated with countries that struggle with poor governance.
They nearly did it. See chart below.
One
The first way they cheated was by demonizing Khan’s expansion of the city’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), a clean-air and climate policy which is unpopular, especially on London’s outskirts. (Tories have more voter support in a donut ring — surrounding Labour support near the city’s centre, according to polls.)
The Donut
The ULEZ expansion requires motorists in older, high-emitting vehicles to pay £12.50 ($15.68) per day, incentivizing the purchase of cleaner cars.
Yet the only reason why the ULEZ policy was necessary at all was because the Tories failed to deploy cost-efficient motorist climate policy at a national level in their 14 consecutive years of power.
While Khan should have deployed the policy with a lower daily fee initially to ease the shock on poorer residents (so had he lost, he would have been partly to blame himself)…the ULEZ is policy that has partly filled a gap at national level by cowardly Tories — who botched a chance to show global leadership of decarbonizing transport across the economy the past 14 years.
And relatedly … Khan’s bus-driving father would be ashamed of his lack of support for buses in outer London…a key reason why Hall did well there.
Keep in mind, the UK led the world into fossil fuels during the industrial revolution. That’s why it has a moral responsibility to lead the world out.
Two
The Tories changed the rules to require voters to bring ID, but the rules on identification at the poll stations were easier for older people (who are more inclined to vote Tory) to comply with vs younger people, who are more likely to vote Labour.
In the 2023 local election at least 14,000 electors were turned away because they lacked ID and did not return.
On Thursday, disgraced Tory former PM Boris Johnson was turned away in an example of political theatre that was clearly contrived, in my opinion … many others seem to agree according to Xeets:
Three
Another change contained in the U.K. Elections Act 2022 which has not made as many headlines as the introduction of Voter ID was the change in the voting system for Metro Mayors (also Police and Crime Commissioners) from the traditional Supplementary Vote to First Past the Post …(according to the Electoral Reform Society … an organisation that supports proportional democratic power [people power] rather than that which allows governance by corporate / military-industrial-intelligence-complex-linked interests).
“With the traditional system, everyone marked who their first and second favourite candidate was, and if no candidate won a majority, they checked these choices to see which of the top two candidates were the most popular more broadly. It means these powerful positions can’t be controlled by just a small minority of the population,” the society explained on May 2.
The above figures show how Khan will now govern with votes from only one sixth of eligible voters. We don’t know how many of the five million who didn’t vote for him (or didn’t vote at all) would have put him as their second or third choice because we did not ask … and easily could have.
To be clear: When I went into the voting booth Thursday, I could only make one choice. I could not give a second choice. Or a third …which would make sure the winner has broad support.
So …if voters collectively thought that voting Tory was the best way to thwart ULEZ, the Tory candidate underdog Susan Hall might have ended up winning. (Indeed the Tories might have won had they allowed second and third choices…which is an argument against the hypothesis in this opinion piece.)
If these three inter-linked strategies for the London mayor’s election had worked for the Tories in 2024 (in a country that’s supposedly a bastion of democracy), it would have boded very badly indeed for the many remaining elections around the world to be held later this year.
I also like the society’s conclusions:
“We shouldn’t have mayors, with the power to sign off big budgets, without broad support. Under First Past the Post, mayors do not have to try and win support outside their core voters and will be governing with a reduced mandate as a result. In essence, the changes to voting have raised the bar for voters by requiring Voter ID, and lowered the bar for politicians as FPTP allows them to govern without winning broad support. They should be making it easier for voters to hold politicians to account, rather than trying out schemes in advance of the general election and ignoring the obvious impact.“
“Trying out schemes” is interesting language. Was this election some kind of deliberate political stress test? Probably. I imagine that with face recognition we will all be voting with our phones in the nearish future.
Also see this: https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/englands-local-elections-show-the-warped-world-of-first-past-the-post/
(Smooths language, adds results, analysis and extra map, earlier added pic of donut, earlier updated with declaration of the win by Labour/Khan.)
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