Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Over 65% of overseas armed forces couldn't vote

This is due to Labour changing the rules on voter registration in the armed forces. They were warned about the low voter registration, but just sent out leaflets. ( see article in todays DT. )

Might this apathy have something to do with the way they thought members of the armed forces might vote ?

2 comments:

Ellee Seymour said...

That is not democracy, I demand another general election! Perfect timing for us.

Mrs Rigby said...

I didn't see this at the time, so I've looked up the article.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1520389/Only-a-third-of-overseas-troops-could-have-voted.html

"only 60 per cent of Britain's 202,000 service personnel were registered to vote in the general election, compared with 93 per cent for the overall electorate. But this figure plummeted to 34 per cent among the 48,000 serving overseas at the time."

"The MoD responded last night by arguing that the figures were so low because members of the Armed Forces were "young and mobile"."

What a damning thing to say - good enough to die, but not good enough to make sure they can vote.