the brilliantly leaping gazelle

One thing that bothered me when I voted earlier and is still bothering me now, is the fact that I didn’t need my present my polling card – or indeed any proof that I was who I claimed to be – to vote. I just gave my name and address, they checked I was on some list and crossed me off it, handed me a ballot paper and that was it.

It seems that all this talk of Russian interference in our election is missing the glaringly obvious flaw in the whole voting process, that the greatest threat to the validity of the vote is the ease with which a vote can be obtained. I live in a ‘safe’ seat – inasmuch as any seat can be called safe at this topsy-turvy election – but were I living in a marginal, then a well orchestrated manipulation could skew the result.

Take Richmond Park, where Zac Goldsmith’s majority is only 45, for example. What would happen if a small number of people, who knew this flaw and his tiny majority, got up really early and posed as other people at multiple polling stations to vote against him? And what if that scenario were to be replayed at every marginal seat with a majority of less than 300? Might there then be legal challenge concerning the legitimacy of the election result? Darwin knows Gina Miller isn’t shy of involving the courts.

I’m not suggesting there is any fraud, well perhaps in the case of claims made by Boris’s Johnson about his deal there most certainly is, just that there exists the potential for it to occur.