Aardvark

Michael, In what election can we vote for all candidates? Seems a pointless exercise to me. I haven't been invited to vote in such an election by UKIP.

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"I do not wish to form my opinions by thoughtlessly quoting others; I wish others to support their opinions by sensibly quoting me." Paul Wesson (Aardvark) 13th April 2008

stathan

I think that it was 4 or 5 of the candidates could be voted for by a single voter, which of course massively inflates the voter figures compared to elections where only one vote can be cast.

michael mcgough

Sorry Ardvark,Stathan makes my point better and more accurately than me I am not au fait with the full procedure but say the vote is for 5 places from a list of 7.You would be able to vote for UP TO five candidates--0-in order 1-5.Strategy might be to vote for just position one for your most favoured candidate thus depriving others of votes.A fair minded person might vote for five.The variance between these options gives a great disparity in numbers of votes cast.It will also depend on whether one ranks position one as 1 or 5 and the winner with lowest or highest numbers .

Aardvark

Thanks for that. I do recall using all of my votes in the last NEC elections. I don't think I voted for any winners.

__________________
When in Woking do as the Wokes do.

"I do not wish to form my opinions by thoughtlessly quoting others; I wish others to support their opinions by sensibly quoting me." Paul Wesson (Aardvark) 13th April 2008

Anthony Butcher

Before making such unhelpful statements, perhaps you could please do us the courtesy of a quick search on your own party's website?
UKIP - Results of the NEC elections March 2008
I didn't make the numbers up. Yes, they are very different voting systems, but Lisa Duffy still received more votes (3370) than Nigel Farage did for leader (3329), and the number of ballots was still nearly 3 times more than previous years. Very few activists normally vote in the NEC elections, but this time around, three times as many decided to vote and no one has provided a single reason why.

I really can't see how anyone sane could think that this is not highly unusual.

Anyway, that it was a highly irregular result isn't in question for anyone who hasn't got UKIP partisan disease; the real discussion was about John's decision not to investigate (AFAIK). From what I have seen (and he may have had different/more information) it looks like a poor decision on this occasion and one that has left unanswered questions and doubts in many people's minds about the reliability of UKIP's internal elections.

That was the purpose of my original posting - to add in a bit more information about John Bufton. As a long term employee, he has a track record that can, and should, be examined. As I said, RS seemed very happy with his performance as an RO and I don't recall anyone ever saying anything bad about him, which is an achievement in UKIP.

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michael mcgough

I am not in the least surprised that Lis Duffy scored so highly because
1)she is young and articulate
2)she was the only woman candidate
3)she hasn't as far as I am aware upset anybody
4)unlike the leadership elections where many were either totally for or against Farage or Ski such polarisation was not evident in the NEC contest

As I now recall the only weighting was reflected in the number of candidates one voted for.Clearly more people put Lisa down than others.

Will it not be the case that apart from the whingers and a a few high profile resignees those not renewing their membership of UKIP would be the less interested/inclined to vote.

A turnout of over 40% is to be commended not knocked.

Bob FM

Michael you are making the point that had occurred to me that perhaps more voted because of decent rather than showing decent by not voting.

Anthony Butcher

You are missing the point. Whether it is good or bad for UKIP, and whether Lisa is a very strong candidate or not is irrelevant. The only important fact is that it was highly unusual and alarm bells whould have been ringing.

It may be that publicity was far better, or the ROs had made some inspirational speeches about the NEC or maybe 3,000 new activists suddenly joined. There may be genuine reasons for the jump, or it could have been fraudulent. That's the point of having a returning officer to oversee the election and check for irregularities. Electoral fraud is not uncommon.

However, we will never know in this case because there wasn't an investigation.

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stathan

I think that the inclusion of prepaid return envelopes was considered to have helped with the higher returns at the time.

Whether this was enough to account for 41% in reality I've no idea.

Anthony Butcher

Well that's another reason to investigate - a positive one. Assuming the vote wasn't fiddled, something worked very well, and it would have been in the party's interests to have found out what that was

__________________
If you care about what's in your food and where it comes from, then get it labelled!
Label My Food - http://www.labelmyfood.org.uk