Crawfs have just voted in our historic EU referendum, in the humble local village hall.

Remember back in 2011 how I observed the Russian Duma elections? Thus:

The arrangements laid down by Russia’s law for conducting elections are technically impressive, albeit detailed to the point of obsession. Russian procedures are better than ours here in the UK in at least three respects:

  • Votes are counted in the polling station concerned immediately after the polls close, in the presence of party and other observers (ballot boxes are not moved to central counting points with the risk of mischief en route)
  • No ID, no vote
  • No postal voting

When I wrote my book review for the LSE on Electronic Voting, I was struck at how we all take for granted the procedural complexity of voting. The following (and many more) are all essential:

  • voters lists compiled and kept up-to-date
  • secret voting
  • ballot boxes sealed throughout the process
  • accurate ballot papers printed and distributed under controlled conditions
  • identification for voters
  • meticulous and transparent counting, to make sure that all votes are counted and only votes properly cast have been counted
  • procedures for disputes as to what a messy mark on a given ballot paper might mean
  • arrangements for recording the final outcome and storing all ballot papers securely in case of future legal challenges.

At literally every stage of the process in any country there is scope for human error and/or deliberate mischief. Ruling out both 100% is impossible.

Take this referendum.

The polling station requires no ID from voters(!). Nor do voters sign the voting register to show that they have voted. Nor do the people handing out the ballot-papers identify themselves. The ballot booth is not screened off. Crucially, no-one other than the people handing out the ballot-papers checks that the number of votes cast tallies with the number of people who enter the polling station. They provide a stubby piece of pencil for the voting deed. And in this referendum case no-one is there from the main political parties to watch the process on the day.

So (in theory) the people sitting behind the desks handing out the ballot papers could collude in stuff the ballot box with votes in quiet moments on behalf of people who have not appeared to vote, and as long as the total number of votes counted is not way out of line with the local average, no-one will find out. Likewise they could while away the quiet hours with a long pair of very thin wire tongs extracting votes from the ballot box, rubbing out the votes cast in pencil and voting differently.

What happens to protect the ballot boxes after polling closes? Presumably some seals are applied under some sort of certified circumstances, but here too there is easy scope for organised mischief away from public eyes.

Don’t get me started on postal voting, potential abuses thereof.

In short, the whole process is primitive, banal, and wide open to myriad abuses. Bring in biometric identification asap.

But … does that matter? Back to Russia:

Russia has 96,000 polling stations catering for nearly 110,000,000 voters. People are voting for national-level politicians, with totals for individual parties simply added together to get a final total (on one way of looking at it, a much simpler and fairer system than they have in eg the USA). The Law of Big Numbers kicks in. Cheating on a scale that makes a significant difference has to be massive – and obvious.

Here too, even though we are a much smaller country, Big Numbers matter. In this referendum case both sides have equal scope for cheating, so insofar as it happens in different places the results (arguably) will tend to neutralise each other. It’s possible but highly (sic) unlikely that the nationwide result will be so close that any detectable cheating effect will have made a decisive difference to the overall outcome – cheating only makes sense if it is big enough to have an impact on a grand scale, and if it is that big it’s bound to be spotted anyway. Plus unlike in Russia we do not send in all the local results to a central office that alone aggregates the votes and proclaims the result. Our local votes are all announced locally and anyone can check that the final national totals as officially agreed are accurate.

Conclusion?

One of the mightiest forces for the way the UK works is Trust. That idea rests on all sorts of shared unspoken assumptions about what we all have in common. Immigration gnaws away at that. We just assume that massed migrants share our sturdy British values, or soon will do so after living here for a while. But is that a wise assumption? What if they don’t?

It seems that in the Netherlands that corresponding question is now open:

What if the European project is an edifice with fatally flawed foundations? How does an open society based on equality survive, when every year it takes in tens if not hundreds of thousands of immigrants from countries with no tradition of openness, equality or democratic debate? Especially when those immigrants consistently have more children than the native Dutch?

There was a time when mainstream Dutch politicians and opinion-makers would answer breezily that the EU was a work in progress and that successful integration would simply take a generation: why would the children of immigrants remain socially and culturally conservative if they could also be Dutch?

That self-confidence is gone and what will take its place is anyone’s guess. What seems certain is that the heady days of progressive optimism are not coming back.

Just like this referendum result. As of 1500 hrs on polling day 23 June 2016 it’s anyone’s guess.

Mine?

That the argument “Why are you Brits moaning? You have all the good bits of the EU and none of the bad bits!” will prevail. Safety first!