Vote for me!

The Electoral Commission have once again raised concerns about postal voting. When this subject is discussed, the problems raised usually concern identity fraud, but to me this is not the main worry. I'm sure the business of people registering and voting under multiple names or in the names of fictitious or dead people and so on can be overcome - at a cost. No, what bothers me is that, however good the system, you can never know whether, when a postal voter was casting their vote, someone was not looking over their shoulder telling them where to put their cross. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence - certainly here in the Midlands - of people being put under pressure by family or employers to apply for a postal vote, and then to demonstrate to them that they had voted in a certain way. The essence of our system is the secret ballot, and I fear that this is incompatible with any method of postal voting.