"Michael Mcneil" wrote

There seems to be a lot of invidious stuff coming to light lately.
British secret services having access to the illegally detained people
in Cuba for instance.

Just as in several dozen conflicts to date, it has been customary to allow
the INTEL forces of one's allies reasonable access to prisoners captured
"under arms" in a military conflict. While their status as captives and the
level of treatment and due process within may be subject to debate, the
prisoners at Guantanamo seem to have certainly qualified as "combatants" and
as with prisoners in past conflicts can certainly be held until the
cessation of military operations. You do recall the treatment provided for
British subjects captured while serving in the German SS forces?

Come to think of it, I don't recall the immediate release of Axis prisoners
after VE or VJ day.


There is no really effective way of cheating the voters over here
though.

If anyone wants to vote they have to register and the register is freely
available to all. If you have voting rights and are not on it, then it
is up to you to put your anme on.

Voting takes place in public amenities overseen by members of all
parties and free for anyone else to observe.

Do you actually think it's any different in the US?

A voter takes a list of candidates into a private room and places a mark
alongside the candidate of his choice.

I'm not sure about the "private room" concept. It sure must take a Hell of
a lot of "private rooms" to handle a big turnout. We use cardboard tabletop
"partitions". in 45 years of elections, I've never felt "peeked on". Nor
do I fear the advent of electronics, with votes as it is with credit cards,
potentially safer than alternatives. The problems are not with the
"systems", but with the people, good, evil or simply stupid, running the
election.

He then places it in the ballot box under the eyes of all and sundry.

Difficult to cheat a simple system like that.

"Cheating" is pretty simple in most every electoral system. Fortunately,
it's pretty tough to manage to accomplish enough of it to alter results
(except in relatively small local increments). Even all that highly
publicized "cheating" in Florida in 2000 turned out not to alter very many
votes (and most of it turned out not to be cheating at all, simply "dumbass"
factors at play), and this time around in Ohio not only was the margin to
wide to cover, but the "cheating" by both sides tended to "offset". If
you're in the UK, the incidence in "cheating" in your history books
certainly should assure you that absolute electoral integrity has not
overtaken the Scuppered H'aisles.

Sadly it is all off topic here.

Yeeeesss...

TMO