d’Hondt

You may have seen the post I did last month that had Sheffield as a fictional super constituency electing six MPs. Using the numbers from this years elections under my fantastical system we would now have 3 Labour, 2 LibDem and a Conservative.

 

Labour	101909	50954.5	33969.67	25477.25
Liberal Democrats	83131	41565.5	27710.33	20782.75
Conservative	49513	24756.5	16504.33	12378.25
BNP	10741	5370.5	3580.333	2685.25
UKIP	8798	4399	2932.667	2199.5
Green	3464	1732	1154.667	866
English Democrats	1078	539	359.3333	269.5
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition	656	328	218.6667	164
Martin Fitzpatrick	429	214.5	143	107.25
Christian Party	250	125	83.33333	62.5
Official Monster Raving Loony Party	164	82	54.66667	41
Communist Party of Britain	139	69.5	46.33333	34.75
Rod Rodgers	40	20	13.33333	10

Sheffield Council AGM - Wednesday May 19th

Seats on the council: Liberal Democrats 42, Labour 39, Greens 2, Independent 1

There will will be a lot of interesting manoeuvres going on between the parties over the next 11 days as they try and work out who can take some semblance of control of the council. It will be interesting to see if yesterday's rumours pan out. Coverage from the Star

No Overall Control

The new make up of the council is Liberal Democrats 42 seats, Labour 39, Greens 2, Independent 1. As I understand it the current cabinet will remain until the council AGM, but the AGM will apoint a LAB lord mayor on the muggins turn principle who will have the casting vote. There is also a strong rumor that the greens will side with the Labour group.

Last Night

Last night, obviously, blogging failed. This is something I can only apologise for, I do hope some of you were following on twitter. I am now off to watch the local election count, which should be much quicker ;-)

General Election live blog

Will appear here from 10pm. Live from Ponds Forge. 10:50 - Blogger being slow, updates will be more frequent on twitter @shefvotes. Ballot box contents being checked atm and local ballots being seperated. 01:20 - Still having issues updating blogger, nothing concrete to report from any seat, just avoided being in shot behind Mr Blunkett. 01:30 - Only other laptop I have seen not in the hands of a media type is being used by the lib dems by the poweraid machine. 02:16 - No official word but the rumour mill says Sheffield counts running ~2 hours late, have seen other parties with laptops now though 02:20 - Again huge apologies for my blogging technology letting me down somewhat, twitter is where it is at. 03:14 - some typos creeping into tweets, all 6 counts still seem far off 03:51 - Difficult to stay out of camera shot now Nick Clegg is here, he made almost strait for Paul Scriven

Live blogging/Tweeting the count

Today is of course polling day.
GO VOTE
So tonight will be the General Election count, as I have been accredited as an observer by the electoral commission I will be there tweeting and blogging.
If that doesn't kill me I will then be at the local count tomorrow afternoon.

A difficult campaign

It has been far harder than I expected having this blog during the electoral campaign. This has been due to how interesting it has been "politically" which as this blog is written from a neutral standpoint made it difficult to cover. The point of this was to see if the internet would be important in raising engagement this time round but that has been pretty much blown out of the water by the TV debates.

Prospective Parliamentary Candidates

The general election candidates list has been updated with the official list of those people that succeeded in the nomination process.

Making Your Mind Up

Today is has a lot of deadlines, it is the last day for applicants to be included in the Register of Electors to be used for both elections (in person as the post won't get there in time) and the last day for requests for a new postal vote or to change or cancel an existing postal vote or proxy appointment.

It is also the last day for delivery of nomination papers /withdrawal of candidature/appointment of election agents for the general election so baring any wrangling over objections to candidates we should have the full list of those standing in all of Sheffield's seats.

Most of the other exciting stuff that has been going on with opinion polls etc is interesting from a personal point of view but not really what this blog is here to cover. However once we have the full list of candidates i hope to start some social media league tables.

In the meantime here is a bit of fun

Updates

The general election candidates list has been updated, the additions have been:
Mark Adshead Official Monster Raving Loony Party (Sheffield Hallam)
Martin Fitzpatrick Independent (Sheffield Hallam)
Elizabeth Beighton Official Monster Raving Loony Party (Sheffield Central)
Steven Andrew Communist Party of Britain (Sheffield South East)

Voter Power update

I thought I should post an update on the ongoing issues with http://www.voterpower.org.uk/ I stumbled across on  Friday my original plan for that post was to lightly touch on electoral reform by showing how a system already in use in some elections in this country could be used for Westminster elections. This is a hugely complex set of topics which I am unlikely to be able to cover in sufficient depth on this blog but I thought the concepts were worth mentioning.

Voter Power was launched with quite a bit of publicity and seemed a good way of highlighting alternative voting systems online, especially in comparison with the original report document which understandably lacks mass market appeal. It was therefore a huge disappointment that it had obvious glaring errors. It had just been something subtle like rounding errors in the numbers or a fault with the visualisations then that wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but the site is currently peddling serious misinformation. The fact that the fault in the data shows on the front page in the two prominent lists of top and bottom ten show that the quality control standards here don’t seem to include having a quick glance over the results let alone a full test suite.

Why is this an issue? This is the so called Internet Election, where social media and networking, blogs and mashups are as important to getting information out as door-stepping and leaflets. The power is there for everyone to be able to put forward their view of the country and how it should be run and provide visualisations on how this compares with reality and the viewpoints of candidates. This sort of increase in information and comparison tools is, in my opinion, a hugely valuable way of increasing engagement and hopefully turn out, so high profile errors like this set the whole process back as they undermine trust,

Martin has been in touch but is away for the weekend so can’t look at the issues that are marring the site until he gets back.

This week on Sheffield Votes

It has been an interesting week here on the Sheffield Votes blog. Here is the list of posts that have been made

Election by thirds

An explination of how Sheffield council's election cycle runs.

General election candidates

The current state of play as to who is standing in each seat in the General Election

Probable General Election Timetable 6th May

The key dates for the election process (also avaliable as a google calendar

Expenses

The rules and regulations about what candidates can spend in the general election campaign

Drawing of lots or the flip of a coin

How do ties get resolved in an election and other parts of the count process.

All but one seat in Sheffield is "Safe"

The Electoral reform society's assesment of the election says Saheffield Central is the only contestable seat in south yorkshire.

Hashtags #Sheffield #GE2010

Co-ordination of social media efforts on the general election

Voter Power - Voter Power and Sheffield South East - Curioser and curioser

Three posts about the Voter Power site and some inconsistancies in the message being put accross.

Curioser and curioser

Looks like there is a one seat difference in the bottom 10 list on voterpower.org.uk, also involving Sheffield.

Top 10
Constituency	VOTE POWER INDEX
ARFON	1.490
CEREDIGION	1.390
CLWYD WEST	1.387
BELFAST SOUTH	1.228
WIRRAL WEST	1.200
PRESELI PEMBROKESHIRE	1.180
SITTINGBOURNE & SHEPPEY	1.176
NA H-EILEANAN AN IAR	1.174
ABERCONWY	1.160
EDINBURGH SOUTH	1.154
Bottom 10
Constituency	VOTE POWER INDEX
KNOWSLEY	0.001
EASINGTON	0.001
BARNSLEY EAST	0.001
SHEFFIELD BRIGHTSIDE & HILLSBOROUGH	0.001
BOOTLE	0.002
LIVERPOOL WALTON	0.002
WASHINGTON & SUNDERLAND WEST	0.002
BELFAST WEST	0.003
COATBRIDGE, CHRYSTON & BELLSHILL	0.003
NORMANTON, PONTEFRACT & CASTLEFORD	0.003

Voter Power and Sheffield South East

The more I look at the Sheffield South East inconsistency I spotted when doing a post about Voter Power this morning the more it looks like a software or data glitch. Looking at the spreadsheet published by the Guardian, which if I am reading right should be the same back end data, then Clive Betts has a safe seat. So something seems to have gone wrong in the data import or the software.

Other sources have Sheffield South East as safe and Magnus from the ERS said in reply to my question by email:

Our determination is an educated guess based on previous results, local election trends, incumbency and demographic trends. Sheffield South East and its predecessor seats have been held by Labour since the 1930s, and the notional 2005 results taking into account boundary changes gives the Labour incumbent Clive Betts a majority of 42%. In my view this is a pretty safe seat.

I am still awaiting a reply from voterpower.org.uk

Voter Power

Today’s political chatter is about a report from the new economics foundation called spoiled ballot, "why less than three per cent have a fair share of power in Britain." Actually very little of it is about the report, most of it is about the Voter Power Index which is a very web 2.0 friendly interface to the data including the compulsory video explaining what the site is about for those who don’t like to read.

In this methodology Sheffield South East turns out to be one of the most powerful in the country in marked contrast to the Electoral Reform Society data I reported Wednesday which makes me worry about the methodology and I’m thinking of emailing the authors to ask them about this. Their reports for the rest of our constituencies are Penistone & Stocksbridge, Sheffield Central Sheffield Brightside & Hillsborough, Sheffield Hallam and Sheffield Heeley.

Following on from this I decided to have a play with the data from the last general election to see what would happen if Sheffield was a super constituency elected using the method used by the UK in the European Parliament elections called the d'Hondt method. You’ll note that the nef report doesn’t have this as an option they suggest using the same mega constituencies that we do currently use for the EU elections for party list elections. They do have a suggestion that could see Sheffield elect as one, but it is based on Single transferable vote which would be impossible to do the kind of back of a napkin maths for the table below involves as it would mean guessing at voter’s second, third, etc choice intentions.

In my fictional system instead of 5 labour MPs and 1 LibDem we would have 3 Labour, 2 LibDem and a Tory (the figures in red represent an elected person). Of course there are flaws with even this extrapolation such as Green supporters only being able to express their preference in half the old constituencies and voting method influences choice but I think the result is interesting none the less.

	Sheffield Central	Sheffield Attercliffe	Sheffield Brightside	Sheffield Heeley	Sheffield Hillsborough	Sheffield Hallam	Total	D'Hondt /2	D'Hondt /3	D'Hondt /4
Labour	14,950	22,250	16,876	18,405	23,477	5,110	101,068	50,534.0	33,689.33	25,267.00
Liberal Democrat	7,895	6,283	3,232	7,035	12,234	20,710	57,389	28,694.5	19,129.67	14,347.25
Conservative	3,094	5,329	2,205	4,987	6,890	12,028	34,533	17,266.5	11,511.00	8,633.25
Green	1,808	-	-	1,312	-	1,331	4,451	2,225.5	1,483.67	1,112.75
Respect	1,284		-	-	-	-	1,284	642.0	428.00	321.00
BNP	539	1,477	1,537	1,314	2,010	469	7,346	3,673.0	2,448.67	1,836.50
UKIP	415	1,680	779	775	1,273	438	5,360	2,680.0	1,786.67	1,340.00
Socialist Alternative		-	-	265	-	-	265	132.5	88.33	66.25
Christian Peoples	-	-	-	-	-	441	441	220.5	147.00	110.25

Hashtags #Sheffield #GE2010

A post this morning on OurKingdom pointed out a suggestion by politicalbetting.com to standardise hashtags for all Constituencies in the general election.
I was initially not sure about this being dictated in advance I am oldfasioned enough to remebr the back channel being something vaguely subversive that happened spontaneously but I can see the arguments that it will help with mash ups and other apps capturing this data especially on election night itself so I'll try and use them where appropriate alongside #GE2010 and #Sheffield.
One thing I do still object to about them is that as far as I am concerned the geek abbreviation for Sheffield is shef with only one f and not two.

The list of tags is:

Penistone & Stocksbridge	#Penistone
Sheffield Central	#SheffC
Sheffield South East	#SheffSE
Sheffield, Brightside & Hillsborough	#SheffBH
Sheffield, Hallam	#SheffHm
Sheffield, Heeley	#SheffHy

All but one seat in Sheffield is "Safe"

According to the Electoral Reform Society Sheffield Central is the only non-safe parliamentary seat in the city.

Name	Electorate	Current Party	Status
Penistone and Stocksbridge	68,628	LAB	Safe
Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough	68,194	LAB	Safe
Sheffield Central	65,515	LAB	Marginal 2 "the real front line between Labour and Conservative government"
Sheffield Hallam	68,863	LD	Safe
Sheffield Heeley	65,904	LAB	Safe
Sheffield South East	67,559	LAB	Safe

In fact according to the full data it is the only non-safe seat in the county.

Drawing of lots or the flip of a coin

Unlike the American electoral system where recounting can go on for days and then move on to months of legal action, electoral law in this country is such that baring credible accusations of widespread fraud the results of a count should be decided within a reasonable amount of time.
The first key to this is the regulations are sprinkled with incidences of the phrase "the (Acting) Returning Officer's decision is final" at first glance this doesn't look democratic, but pretty much universally these discussions are made within clear sight of agents of the candidates, other members of staff and for the last few years accredited observers and officials are liable for criminal prosecution if it can be proven they are in breach of their duty.
Secondly the methods for dealing with "doubtful" ballot papers give a large amount of leeway for sensible interpretation of a voters intentions with a presumption to accept rather than reject marginal papers. This adjudication is one of the areas where the decision is final unlike say the 2008 Senate election in Minnesota which took 246 days to resolve due to legal action over the admissibility of ballots.
Thirdly while there is provision for one (or more) recounts for close or in doubt results, if it is the case that there is little purpose in subsequent recounts due to no significant change in the results there is a presumption they will not be repeated. Note that recounts are just as valid at the bottom end of the table as at the top if there is a possibility of a candidate being credited with enough votes to avoid loosing their deposit.
Finally in the case that after recounting there is a tie for first (and while we have a first past the post electoral system and are electing one person per seat, only first) the regulations state that one extra vote shall be allocated according to the drawing of lots or upon the flip of a coin. This has happened on at least one occasion in a local council election.

Expenses

Once the election is officially called that may well not be the end of scandals involving expenses.
After Parliament has been dissolved MPs are no longer MPs but if they have been selected by their party to run again, or are running independently they are candidates.There is a strict limit to how much candidates are allowed to spend, or have spent on their behalf during elections. For borough constituencies such as those in Sheffield the limit is £7150 plus 5p per elector so Sheffield Central for example will have an expenses limit of approximately £11500 which they will have had to raise personally or from party funds. If the candidate is accepting donations then any that are over £50 must be declared and conform to rules abut the donor. Items that are counted in these expenses include:

• Leaflets and other unsolicited material sent to electors
• Advertising
• Transport
• Public meetings
• Staff costs
• Accommodation
• Admin costs, such as stationery, telephone calls

While some items are excluded such as:

• Volunteer time
• Use of anyone’s sole or main home, if it is given free of charge
• Transport in a vehicle which was acquired for someone’s personal use, and given free of charge
• Use of computing or printing equipment primarily acquired for personal use (if given free of charge)

Candidates also get one free mailout to all registered electors and the use free use of rooms for public meetings. Receipts and invoices must be kept and submitted after the election. The full sets of rules and advice for candidates and their agents is on the Electoral Commission's website.

Probable General Election Timetable 6th May

The news media seem very certain that the Prime Minister will be going to the palace later today and asking the Queen to dissolve parliament next Monday, the 12th. That would mean that the timetable for the election after the 12th would be would be:
20 April

Last day for delivery of nomination papers /withdrawal of candidature/appointment of election agents (4pm)
Statement of persons nominated published at close of time for making objections to nomination papers (5pm on Day 6) or as soon afterwards as any objections are disposed of
Last day for requests for a new postal vote or to change or cancel an existing postal vote or proxy appointment (5pm)
Last day to apply to register to vote

27 April

Last day for new applications to vote by proxy (except for medical emergencies) (5pm)

4 May

Last day for appointment of polling and counting agents

6 May 2010

Polling Day (7am – 10pm) Last day to issue replacements for spoilt or lost postal ballot papers (5pm) Last day for new applications to vote by proxy on grounds of a medical emergency (5pm) Last day to make alterations to the register to correct a clerical error or to implement a court registration appeal) decision (9pm)

I understand from the Electoral Commission survey on the matter that Sheffield intends to count after the polls close on the evening of the 6th/early hours of the 7th.

General election candidates

I have started pulling the candidate lists for the general election out of the data provided by yournextmp.com and adding in twitter usernames and web page URLs (yournextmp.com has links for candidates but it doesn't expose them in the data) to post on this site.
Obviously as the general election hasn't been officially called let alone the nomination process formally completed the list will probably change between now and the election, a fair chunk of the process is automated so as the lists get updated mirroring the changes here will be reasonably easy. Please take a look at the note at the top of the listings page about how to get changes made.
Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be an online aggregation resource for the local elections so I suspect I will end up doing a data entry job once the candidate lists are released.

Election by thirds

Each ward in Sheffield is represented by three councillors each serving a four year term. Elections take place 'by thirds' meaning for one of the three places at a time every year for three years with a year off in the fourth. To illustrate lets look at the Central ward, created in 2004.

Central ward 2004

The example starts at 2004, due to the electoral boundaries being changed every seat on the council was up for election. The top three candidates all got a seat, the person with the most votes over all got a 4 year term, 2nd place a three year term and 3rd two years.
The results were

Jean Cromar (Labour) 1,355; Jillian Creasy (Green) 1,305; Mohammad Azim (Liberal Democrat) 1,276;

Leaving the seat with multiparty representation for two years.

Central ward 2006

2005 was a fallow year with no election, in 2006 Mohammad Azim having got the fewest votes of the three elected defended his seat but was beaten by Bernard Little from the Green party.
This was the only seat on the council to change the party representing it that year.

Central ward 2007

Having placed second in the 2004 election Jillian Creasy was up for re-election in 2007 and ran a successful campaign to retain her seat.

This of course meant no change to the party make up of the ward.

Central ward 2008

In 2008 the last of the three seats elected together came up for re-election and was captured by the Green Party. So as you can see over a whole electoral cycle the representation of a seat can change significantly, although for most wards on Sheffield council things are less dramatic.
There was no election in 2009.

How to become a candidate in the local elections

Most people standing in the elections to become a councillor will be doing so as part of a political party, but anyone can be a candidate who is over 18 years old; is British, a 'qualifying' Commonwealth citizen^[1] or an EU citizen; qualifies as local^[2] and are not disqualified^[3].

So what do you need to do if you want to stand?

You will need to obtain a nomination form from the Returning Officer (this is a mostly ceremonial post, in practice the administration of the election is handled by the Acting Returning Officer and the council electoral services department). As well as your full name and address, the form will ask how you want to be known on the ballot paper, so if you are better known in the community by another name it can still appear. You will also need to get the signatures of 10 registered electors.

In order for your nomination as a candidate to be valid, you will have to state that you meet the qualification criteria, are not disqualified from standing and give your date of birth. This will need to be provided in writing as a formal consent to nomination.

The deadline for nominations is Noon, 8 April 2010

For full definitive guidance see the Candidates and agents page on the Electoral Commission website.

^[1]A qualifying Commonwealth citizen for candidates is defined as a citizen of a country listed in the British Nationality Act 1981 as a Commonwealth country and who does not require leave to remain in the UK or who has indefinite leave to remain.
^[2]They have lived/worded or occupied property in the area for the last 12 months or is registered as an elector
^[3]By working for the local authority, being a bankrupt or convict, or having being disqualified from standing under the laws that govern elections.

Notice of Election - Sheffield City Council

The official notice for the local elections has been published. See the full notice

Help wanted

After the "statement of persons nominated" is published (Monday 12 April 2010 for the local elections, unknown as yet for the general election) I will be endeavouring to publish a directory of candidates, including any relevant web addresses, twitter usernames, other social media profiles etc. If you know anyone who will be a candidate in either set of elections in Sheffield please get them to email in with details or of course if you are standing, email in yourself. I currently haven't decided on whether there will be any restrictions, for example on the number of links per candidate. As I have a requirement to be politically impartial I will be making an concerted effort to contact all parties and independent candidates and won't publish anything if the response is skewed, by any particular party boycotting the directory for instance.

Boundary Changes

Do you know your MP?
Have you been your representative for years?
They may not even be a candidate for your vote at the next election, even before any question about them being returned to parliament is decided. Firstly they may not be standing again, like Richard Caborn, who has decided to retire and I will be putting pages up with the candidates later on (you can find out most of the selected candidates for the main parties, but I prefer to wait for the official nomination process). The other reason is that the Boundary Commission for England has redrawn the constituencies in Sheffield. For the dry official document outlining the changes you can download it as a pdf from www.official-documents.gov.uk. You can also use www.election-maps.co.uk from the Ordnance Survey to look up the new Parliamentary boundaries; unfortunately you can’t do a postcode search on this site, you will need to search for your existing constituency, find your house on the map then using the ‘Show Layers’ tab overlay the new borders. I haven't yet found anyone who has a postcode lookup service for the new constituencies, if you know of one please add it to the comments. Below are links to the wikipedia pages for each of the seats as they will be at the election, from there you can find links to other information such as notional results for the 2005 elections as if these seats existed.

Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough - Burngreave, Firth Park, Hillsborough, Shiregreen & Brightside and Southey wards
Sheffield Central - Broomhill, Central, Manor Castle, Nether Edge and Walkley wards
Sheffield, Hallam - Crookes, Dore & Totley, Ecclesall, Fulwood and Stannington wards
Sheffield, Heeley - Arbourthorne, Beauchief & Greenhill, Gleadless Valley, Graves Park and Richmond wards
Sheffield South East - Beighton, Birley, Darnall, Mosborough and Woodhouse wards
Penistone and Stocksbridge - East Ecclesfield, Stocksbridge & Upper Don and West Ecclesfield wards (and Dodworth, Penistone East and Penistone West from Barnsley)

General Election count in Sheffield

The Electoral Commission has been surveying Returning Officers about when they are planning to run their counts for the General Election and Sheffield has reported that they are going to begin counting on the night of the poll, whenever that may be. They have already indicated that their count for the Local Elections will be on the Friday afternoon.

What am I doing?

As you can see from the sidebar description as well as watching our democratic process at work I am doing this to see how technology might be beneficial to the democratic process.
Let me be clear this is not about electronic voting or counting, we are not in a position to do this securely at the moment and possibly never will be. For more on the electronic voting pilots and counts carried out in the last few years read the Open Rights Group's reports on the matters.

No this is about spreading information to the electorate, before during and after elections at all levels to promote engagement.
Before is trying to show the mechanisms running up to polling day, so for example will promoting the candidate nomination process widen the interest in standing for election away from just members of the main parties?
During is going to first be the depressingly familiar modern task of trying to get the electorate to care enough to go vote, then it will be looking at useful ways of getting the rumours and results out from the count, what formats will be best, just tweeting? Some XML format or other? HTML with RDFa? It is this point where I am interested in your opinions an also want to encourage you to do something similar in your area.
After I will definitely want to review what was done and see what improvements can be made for next time (which could be in fairly quick order if the local and general elections are on different dates) .

Some useful links

A page on the Sheffield Council website about how to register to vote;
The Electoral Commission's About My Vote portal;
"I promise to vote in the next general election." a facebook group http://bit.ly/promise2vote.

Local Elections Calendar

The published timetable for the local elections on May 6th has been published on the Sheffield Votes calender. Sheffield council has no current timetable for the general election until it is called, but Runnymede Borough Council have an example timetable based on it being called for the same day as the local elections.      (Calendar ID: 6futn88saia01h6dgfendhptk8@group.calendar.google.com)

The Rules

It has been made very clear to me that with the accreditation as an observer I have to follow certain rules and regulations. They are set down in a code of practice for observers and returning officers. The other thing that has been highlighted is that my actions are covered by primary legislation, most importantly section 66 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 the provisions of which are designed to maintain the secrecy of the ballot. They apply to all accredited observers at polling stations, the issue and receipt of postal ballot papers and the count. Section 66 is reproduced below in full, for use by observers.

Section 66 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 (as amended)

Requirement of secrecy

1. The following persons
   1. every Returning Officer and every Presiding Officer or clerk attending at a polling station,
   2. every candidate or election agent or polling agent so attending,
   3. every person so attending by virtue of any of sections 6A to 6D of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, shall maintain and aid in maintaining the secrecy of voting and shall not, except for some purpose authorised by law, communicate to any person before the poll is closed any information as to –
      1. the name of any elector or proxy for an elector who has or has not applied for a ballot paper or voted at a polling station;
      2. the number on the register of electors of any elector who, or whose proxy, has or has not applied for a ballot paper or voted at a polling station; or
      3. the official mark.
2. Every person attending at the counting of the votes shall maintain and aid in maintaining the secrecy of voting and shall not –
   1. ascertain or attempt to ascertain at the counting of the votes the number or other unique identifying mark on the back of any ballot paper;
   2. communicate any information obtained at the counting of the votes as to the candidate for whom any vote is given on any particular ballot paper. Application for accreditation as an electoral observer for individuals
3. No person shall –
   1. interfere with or attempt to interfere with a voter when recording his vote;
   2. otherwise obtain or attempt to obtain in a polling station information as to the candidate for whom a voter in that station is about to vote or has voted;
   3. communicate at any time to any person any information obtained in a polling station as to the candidate for whom a voter in that station is about to vote or has voted, or as to the number or other unique identifying mark on the back of the ballot paper given to a voter at that station;
   4. directly or indirectly induce a voter to display his ballot paper after he has marked it so as to make known to any person the name of the candidate for whom he has or has not voted.
4. Every person attending the proceedings in connection with the issue or the receipt of ballot papers for persons voting by post shall maintain and aid in maintaining the secrecy of the voting and shall not –
   1. except for some purpose authorised by law, communicate, before the poll is closed, to any person any information obtained at those proceedings as to the official mark; or
   2. except for some purpose authorised by law, communicate to any person at any time information obtained at those proceedings as to the number or other unique identifying mark on the back of the ballot paper sent to any person; or
   3. except for some purpose authorised by law, attempt to ascertain at the proceedings in connection with the receipt of ballot papers the number or other unique identifying mark on the back of any ballot paper; or
   4. attempt to ascertain at the proceedings in connection with the receipt of the ballot papers the candidate for whom any vote is given in any particular ballot paper or communicate any information with respect thereto obtained at those proceedings.
5. No person having undertaken to assist a blind voter to vote shall communicate at any time to any person any information as to the candidate for whom that voter intends to vote or has voted, or as to the number or other unique identifying mark on the back of the ballot paper given for the use of that voter.
6. If a person acts in contravention of this section he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 6 months.
7. In their application in relation to an election of the London members of the London Assembly at an ordinary election, the preceding provisions of this section shall have effect with the insertion, after the words ‘the candidate for whom’, in each place where they occur, of ‘, or the registered political party towards the return of whose candidates,’.
8. In relation to an election of the London members of the London Assembly at an ordinary election, any reference in this section to the return of a registered political party’s candidates is a reference to the return of candidates included in the list of candidates submitted by the registered political party for the purposes of the election.