Live By The Tweet...
The first case of electoral Twitter law breaking in the land and who do you think it could possibly have been... drum roll please... of course. Labour's very own Twitter Tsar Kerry McCarthy. As a lawyer and a whip you would hope she would have just taken a moment to think, "hang on...maybe I shouldn't broadcast this sensitive infomation to the world". She has tried to laugh it off to
Sky
but suddenly it gets serious. Her opponents have a very good case against her in terms of election rules and it seems the Sunlight Centre
have a very good case against her in terms of the law.Chief ConstableThe letter is with the police.
Avon and Somerset Constabulary
Police Headquarters
PO Box 37
Valley Road, Portishead
Bristol
BS20 8QJ
29th April 2010
By fax to 01275 816 040
COMPLAINT REGARDING KERRY MCCARTHY'S
PUBLICATION OF POSTAL VOTE DATA
To the Chief Constable,
I am writing to ask you to investigate a possible breach of electoral law by Kerry McCarthy, the Labour Party candidate in Bristol East.
On Thursday, April 29th 2010 at 14:36, it appears Ms. McCarthy posted the following information on her Twitter account:
“First PVs opened in east Bristol, our sample: Eng Dems █; Greens █; UKIP █; TUSC █; BNP █; Lib Dem █; Tory █; Labour █. #gameON!”
When the information was "retweeted" (re-posted) by other users of the site with queries as to whether her knowing and publishing the information was legal, she apparently deleted the tweet. It seems did this too quickly for it to appear in the Google cache record. It does, however, appear in the records of Tweetminster, an online aggregator of political tweets. The relevant Tweetminster record is appended for your convenience and is available at the following web address:https://search.tweetminster.co.uk/statuses/?q=first+pvs+ opened+in+east+bristol
Upon phoning Bristol Electoral Services, we were told that all the candidates' agents were present at the opening of around two hundred postal votes this week. They are not meant to see the results, however, and if they do are under strict confidentiality rules, not least because they risk prejudicing the results of the election. There are further laws against publishing the information in written form.
We ask you to investigate whether Ms. McCarthy did, indeed, have access to and publish confidential information about postal votes, and whether her agent could have passed her the information.
Yours faithfully
Posts
8 comments:
Pleased that Sunlight is taking this up TB/HC.
Wether we are Blue, Red, Green, Yellow or numpty, the one thing that binds us is the purity of the confidential democratic process.
As you so rightly say, the stupid, stupid woman is a lawyer, and has been a whip and thus logically ignorant stupidity is no defence.
Plod arrested Damian Green and he hadn't even broken the law yet Twittertwonk has plainly prejudiced a democratic constituency election.
Time to polish the truncheons and fire up the Panda.
Dear Harry
You bigot
Love Kerry
Mr Bear are you in breach of the Law by having the figures on your website, May be best to erase the actual figures
The week just gets better and better. I see
Nice ;-)
What a fine mentor for Kryptonite Nelly. It's just ridiculous.
Why is everyone talking about Sction 66A. It doesn't apply - it relates to exit poll information.
The relevant proscription relating to opening postal votes is in Section 66 (4) ROPA 1983, those attending:
"shall not 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."
Kerry's Labour gang in Bristol have a record of dodgy behaviour. A councillor in her area in 2007 used an address he didnt live at to register to vote, and another of her candidates was involved in a photo faking scandal exposed on Lib Dem voice:
https://www.libdemvoice.org/are-labour-faking-photos-in-bristol-717.html
Kerry McCarthy is still keeping quiet on the Cowangate scandal! She was emailed on the 12th February 2010. Labour said they would hold an enquiry into how John Cowan was selected as a PPC for South East Cambridgeshire. So far they have not contacted me regarding this matter. Douglas Alexander said it was of the great importance to hold an enquiry. Kerry knows more about John Cowan then she is letting on. She must stand down before she does anymore damage!