* Labour were told 17 days before the election that the [Chief Electoral Officer] considered the pledge cards electoral advertisements.
* Labour offered, prior to the election, to include the pledge cards in their election return.
* That offer, was withdrawn after the election. The large cost of the pledge cards makes it difficult to reach any conclusion other than the offer was made with bad faith to stop the CEO referring them pre-election to the Police. In other words they lied to the CEO. ...
The unfortunate effect of all this, is that the authority of the Chief Electoral Officer and the Electoral Commission have been massively undermined, perhaps fatally. If a party can ignore warnings from the CEO 19 days before the election, lie to the CEO, make offers and retract them and all without any sanction at all - then you have the wild west. ...
It may not be a stolen election, but it does make it a very dodgy "win". If the Police had done their job then there would be the benefit of a Court Judgement to resolve the matter.
All else being equal, I would rather have Labour in power than National. But cheating to win an election is absolutely unacceptable. I only hope that voters care enough about the integrity of our electoral system to punish Labour at the polls next time around, and in the meantime, pressure politicians to take steps to ensure this doesn't happen again.
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I agree.
ReplyDeleteBut while this may be the only option unfortunatly this puts the moral public in an awkward position.
I think this needed to be dealt with in the courts and they needed to have some sort of restitution. personally I wouldnt mind seeing some people in jail over it (and if that included helen so be it) but I'd be happy with them deducting over spending from future budgets or some similar sort of restitution.